Anti-Ebola Drug ZMapp Makes Clean Sweep: 18 of 18 Monkeys Survive Infection 91
Scientific American reports, based on a study published today in Nature, that ZMapp, the drug that has been used to treat seven patients during the current Ebola epidemic in West Africa, can completely protect monkeys against the virus, research has found. ... The drug — a cocktail of three purified immune proteins, or monoclonal antibodies, that target the Ebola virus — has been given to seven people: two US and three African health-care workers, a British nurse and a Spanish priest. The priest and a Liberian health-care worker who got the drug have since died. There is no way to tell whether ZMapp has been effective in the patients who survived, because they received the drug at different times during the course of their disease and received various levels of medical care.
NPR also has an interview with study lead Gary Kobinger, who says that (very cautious) human trials are in the works, and emphasizes the difficulites of producing the drug in quantity.
Good news everybody (Score:2)
Project 18 monkeys is a go.
I for one welcome our simian overlords.
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"like lions and tigers keep their prey genetically healthy by picking off the bad ones, but you got a drug that keeps them away"
I don't think ZMapp is a very good lion or tiger repellant.
Re: Good news everybody (Score:5, Insightful)
That isn't how evolution works. What you meant was genetically less fit to resist predation by lions and tigers before having a chance to breed if and only if lions and tigers are a significant cause of that species not being able to breed in comparison to other factors.
I, for one, don't give a shit about genetic fitness against Ebola. Thinking that somehow these people (or animals) "deserve" to be weeded out because they are "bad" in the sense there is something wrong with them is completely unfounded, and is nothing more than blaming the victim.
Or trolling.
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I was talking about the mind control parasites, that cooperate with every living animal in existence. For instance, the parasite teams up with a species of wasp that requires mind controlling a cockroach to lay eggs onto. Another one teams up with a worm vehicle, and helps that worm infect and mind control snails to be eaten by birds, or ants to be eaten by cows. These mind control parasites are also responsible for all human dreams, and things like hearing voices, visions and messages of prophets in the pa
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Every time you see a zit, that's an unhappy parasite that lives in you, maybe one of the dumb ones or one of the intelligent ones, who knows, but if you tried to kill it you would have very serious other issues, and probably would not succeed. The best thing to do is not to fight them but to team up with them, unless of course you are sick from Ebola. And there is such a thing as a fight, as between mind controlled ant tribes and such, and they want to maintain fighting skills, because that's another vulner
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Exactly. That's the other side of the story, the humanity part. So how do you balance humanity with the need for genetic fitness.
In a village there may be born a retard, or a malformed, deformed person. Or a really ugly one, but that's a bit up in the air, because everyone can be beautiful. But this is how a village goes about it: if you're defective, we wish you never were born in the first place(, as in a stillborn baby that ended up barely making it, and has serious issues throughout life from it, if we
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I'm glad that I can go under a pseudonym and maintain anonymity to where I can write shit like that without anybody knowing who I really am :)
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If you like Ebola you are more than welcome to go to Africa and try out your 'genetic fitness' for yourself...
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Virii are not the least bit intelligent by any reasonable definition. And Ebola doesn't seem to be causing any evolutionary pressure except for a resistance to itself.
However, it seems this epidemic has exposed the lingering traces of Social Darwinism exemplified by your post, as well as - once again - demonstrated how they could be a fatal weakness if allowed to remain operative.
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The last time a test was attempted, we just got a few letters typed over and over and over, and the typewriters ended up full of poo. :(
It's underway, we call this project Internet. You will have no trouble finding the complete works of William Shakespeare online. Still haven't found a way to get rid of the poop flinging and random typing though.
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. I'm still anxiously awaiting another test of the infinite monkey hypothesis [wikipedia.org].
The last time a test was attempted, we just got a few letters typed over and over and over, and the typewriters ended up full of poo. :(
Essentially a J.K. Rowling novel.
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It was supposed to be 12 monkeys. Idiots!
oops redux (Score:3)
you forgot to read the summary or the article
Anti-Ebola Drug ZMapp Makes Clean Sweep: 18 of 18 Monkeys Survive Infection [slashdot.org]
Human Subjects (Score:3)
When the human testing starts, should it be old people first? afftected-continent people first? family-receives-high-payment people first?
I think they should be volunteers at the very least.
Re:Human Subjects (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it should be infected people.
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So apparently do the people making the decision, so Im glad that all of the important people here are agreed.
Re:Human Subjects (Score:5, Informative)
By law in the U.S. (and most other countries), as well as health care and research codes of ethics, study participants must voluntarily provide informed consent to receive experimental treatments. It's extremely difficult to prove the voluntary part for at-risk populations including people who are elderly, poor, or undereducated. Studies of these populations require additional oversight and safeguards.
Source: I'm qualified to perform research with participants who have linguistic or cognitive impairments and did so during my M.S. program and in my first job after graduation.
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When the human testing starts, should it be old people first? afftected-continent people first? family-receives-high-payment people first?
I think they should be volunteers at the very least.
If you RTFA you'll notice that human testing has already started.
Re:Human Subjects (Score:4, Interesting)
I think they should be volunteers at the very least.
Given the 90% mortality rate of ebola, I suspect nearly anyone infected will want to volunteer. The problem is that the drug can't be mass produced yet. 10s of doses takes months to produce using the current method, which is genetically modified tobacco plants (bit of irony there). A massive influx of resource is needed to ramp up production.
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Re:Human Subjects (Score:5, Insightful)
i read the fatality rate in this epidemic has been more around 40%.
The lowered lethality is actually a bad thing. It means people aren't getting as sick, are staying ambulatory longer, and are spreading the disease to more additional people. With a lethality rate of 90% a disease will likely burn out fast. At 40%, it has more time to spread, and can kill far more people in total. Despite the lower lethality, this outbreak has killed more than any other [wikipedia.org]. If the virus continues to adapt to human hosts, and the lethality falls to 10 or 20%, we are in big trouble.
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"In reality, the worst case scenario now involves an immune host/carrier. "
Looks like in reality you don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about. Such a person/vector would be a pathologist's fucking wet dream to forming a vaccine against the disease in the first fucking place.
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Looks like in reality you don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about. Such a person/vector would be a pathologist's fucking wet dream to forming a vaccine against the disease in the first fucking place.
like in left for dead
Re:Human Subjects (Score:4, Insightful)
"In reality, the worst case scenario now involves an immune host/carrier. "
Looks like in reality you don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about. Such a person/vector would be a pathologist's fucking wet dream to forming a vaccine against the disease in the first fucking place.
You watch too much TV.
You can't just find "patient 0", or "the primordial sample" as TNT's shitty show calls it, and then magically get a cure shat out.
You can't just find some schlub who's immune and magically figure out why and make a vaccine to immunize other people.
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Of course not, but let me put it in sysadmin terms:
System a is having a problem
System b with a slightly different configuration is avoiding the problem
When trying to solve the "problem" the normal way (Documentation, Google) fails usually you start making "a" look more like "b" until the problem goes away. Or are you saying that finding a working example of what you are trying to accomplish is not extremely valuable?
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Of course not, but let me put it in sysadmin terms:
System a is having a problem
System b with a slightly different configuration is avoiding the problem
When trying to solve the "problem" the normal way (Documentation, Google) fails usually you start making "a" look more like "b" until the problem goes away. Or are you saying that finding a working example of what you are trying to accomplish is not extremely valuable?
I'm saying that what you said is fucking retarded horseshit based on watching too much TV.
"In reality, the worst case scenario now involves an immune host/carrier. "
Looks like in reality you don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about. Such a person/vector would be a pathologist's fucking wet dream to forming a vaccine against the disease in the first fucking place.
Your bizarre attempt to deflect with a shitty analogy doesn't change that (You think human immune systems are like computers? You think computers are fixed via documentation and google as opposed to diagnostics? You think you can make a human with ebola more like a person immune to ebola how, exactly?)
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You might want to learn to read usernames; I'm not the GP.
And unless you have a ", MD" after your name, you have no more qualification to discuss this than the rest of us, so why don't you take your profanity laced drivel and shove it up your ass.
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The whole point of such a person would be, they are not showing symptoms,so how the duck are you going to find them?
Re: Human Subjects (Score:1)
So the mortality rate is not 90% - the media is, as usual, misquoting the figure. They actually quote was something more like "a mortality rate of up to 90%" because one outbreak has had a mortality rate this high. This particular outbreak, as of yesterday, only had a mortality rate of 51%. Other outbreaks have different rates depending on local conditions, such as how good the care the patients receive is. I think the cumulative for all outbreaks since the 70's is about 65% IIRC.
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So the mortality rate is not 90% - the media is, as usual, misquoting the figure. They actually quote was something more like "a mortality rate of up to 90%" because one outbreak has had a mortality rate this high. This particular outbreak, as of yesterday, only had a mortality rate of 51%. Other outbreaks have different rates depending on local conditions, such as how good the care the patients receive is. I think the cumulative for all outbreaks since the 70's is about 65% IIRC.
And that number is likely to be higher than reality since people who aren't very sick will be unwilling to present for care and, given the poor state of public health infrastructure in that neck of the woods, population surveillance is very hard.
They will have a better idea in the upcoming months when they can screen for Ebola antibodies in the general population.
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When the human testing starts, should it be old people first? afftected-continent people first? family-receives-high-payment people first?
Real clinical trials do not work like this. If you want to do a real trial, you first have to establish a team and treatment center that can administer your therapy and collect the data you need. You then establish EXCLUSION criteria, i.e., people who will not be included in the trial (usually old people, who have an annoying tendency to die, and children, because sick kids scare the shit out of most doctors). *Everybody* else who comes to the center, who has the disease, gets offered enrollment in the t
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Trolls first.
I think they should be volunteers at the very least.
Your application as a volunteer has been accepted. Your Ebola infection should shortly be delivered and the drugs (or placebo ; not your choice which you get) will be delivered in 10 days time, by when you should have started to develop symptoms. Please take it to a nearby clinic and pay someone to inject y
Main Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
with Ebola control is health care infra-structure in affected countries. A far cry from what would be necessary to contain further spread. There was one report on a radio station that there are like 10 doctors in a whole country (Africa, forgot the name).
Even if you have the best drug available defeating the virus in a day, it won't help at all under those circumstances - spread by body fluids from infected individuals.
The outcome can only be guessed...
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There was one report on a radio station that there are like 10 doctors in a whole country
That would NPR's report as well which stated 50 doctors total in Liberia after some of left during the beginning of the infection.
http://wvpe.org/post/who-warns... [wvpe.org]
Of course considering the mess Liberia has been in for 20+ years this outbreak is relatively minor and only receiving attention due to sensationalism.
Re:Main Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course considering the mess Liberia has been in for 20+ years this outbreak is relatively minor and only receiving attention due to sensationalism.
No, it's receiving a lot of attention because the outbreak is not contained to a small remote village as with previous outbreaks. It's not contained at this point (partly due to the lack of govt in these areas), and there is a significant population in danger. The fairly long incubation period of up to a few weeks means this could easily be carried back to major populated areas and spread like wildfire.
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Re:Main Problem (Score:5, Informative)
In any case, so far, the only people infected in Nigeria are the health care professionals that treated a Liberian who arrived infected, and the families of those health care workers.
Disclaimer: two of the deceased (a doctor and a nurse) were known to a colleague of my partner.
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No more monkey deaths. (Score:2)
Good news for the wealthiers (Score:3)
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and is the usa the last resort jail / prison healt (Score:2)
and is the usa the last resort jail / prison healthcare system will cover it as well.
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Somewhat Less Than 50 White People... (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like The Onion got this one wrong.
Experts: Ebola Vaccine At Least 50 White People Away [theonion.com]
I suppose it's a commentary on the state of the world that The Onion is so often inadvertently right with their headlines.
Donations... (Score:2)
Who/Where can we donate to help get basic supplies to the doctors in Africa; without 98% of it disappearing into 'overhead'?
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Dear Sir Kaenneth,
Please permit me to make your acquaintance in so informal a manner. This is necessitated by my urgent need to reach a dependable and trust worthy foreign partner to transfer international donations to Africa. My name is Dr. William Monroe, colleague of esteemed Ebola expert Dr. John Shumejda of Nigeria.
Please sir, as a humanitarian, if you can wire $189,000,000.00 USD to my Bank of Bahamas account, I can assure you that 98% of that contribution will not disappear into the 'overhead' of whi
Re:Donations... (Score:5, Informative)
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontiéres (MSF)
http://www.doctorswithoutborde... [doctorswit...orders.org]
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
ZMapp experiments done on tobacco plants. (Score:1)
If they have practice gengengeering on some thing, do it on something that can be safely erased if we fuck it all up.
They got all kinds of varieties of tobacco plants they can experiment on, we won't miss one of them
We can erase the entire tobacco supply and never cry one tear if there is a monstrous fuck-up.
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That depends on whether the monstrous fuck-up is just extinction of one plant variety or Triffidized tobacco.
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50% better! (Score:1)
Risk Management (Score:4, Insightful)
Look, I'm all for getting as much Zmapp to patients as is possible. I think a lot of people are agreement on this.
But we also need to do something about the effed up process of the approval of drugs and vaccines for these deadly diseases.
I'm thinking specifically about the malaria vaccine that has been known to be effective since '96/'97, but which has been held up for extended testing trials by (IIRC) the British drug regulators, who again put a hold on it this spring because it might not be entirely effective in newborn infants.
Meanwhile two million children are dying every year from malaria. This is a really, really, really, screwed up situation, and we have an ethical obligation to do what we can to put an end to these processes.
Even if the latest delay is "only" three months, that's a half million kids or so. It's unconscionable how poor the risk management analysis is - the perfect can be the very, very deadly enemy of the good. And so can drug-agency bureaucrats.
Re:Risk Management (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps nothing would happen. That'd be great, but it's also a gamble. It's possible that the relaxed requirements mean a side-effect slips through unnoticed, causing as great or greater harm later in the future. It's unlikely, but it's possible, and it only takes one for everyone to panic. Probably the best example we have of what could happen is Thalidomide.
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Do you have a source for that malaria fact? I just wonder whether there's maybe more to it than just its effectiveness in newborns.
Another win for bad science! (Score:1)
We're not told the size of the control group, but if it were 18 monkeys to match the treated group, you had a very hardy set of monkeys or a less aggressive strain of the virus.
It is tainted (Score:1)