Well weirdly the US military might actually do good on this one. The guy they hired for 20 years to find a cure for Ebola who recently moved over to a University research team to continue his work has found a vaccine (3 different approaches)which also acts as a cure within the early stages of the disease presenting...however he says if you're at the bleeding out your orifices stage there's not a treatment that can be invented that will help you. .....unfortunately it's only at animal testing so far. Obviously it's at very early stages and a long way from human testing....although with a 90% mortality rate I'm fairly sure if I got it I'd be prepared for them to use me as a guinea pig! Edit, can't remember his name but he was interviewed on radio 4 on Tuesday or Wednesday which is where I go this from.
Frank, why did you put the last line in? Sisu will now take great pains to prove that his work was only undertaken to confuse the great public and spread false information. Trouble with Sisu is that he does have 1 brain cell and it makes him very dangerous
Hi Dave, just put it in as I didn't have a linkable source and wanted to show I wasn't just making it up lol.... It is something I wondered though. I can understand why a company wouldn't test a new headache tablet on the public in case it turns out your head falls off but in the case of a disease with such a High mortality rate and such a painful way to die why cnt you at least give the victim the option...can't think the side effects could be much worse than dissolving..... Thin edge of the wedge I suppose...
Interesting point, DF. Not sure to be honest. Might have something to do with the Helsinki declaration, or something along those lines. Testing on humans is a minefield, but funnily enough testing on animals is harder to get permission for. It's the same sort of irony that saw the foundation of the NSPCA 60-years before the NSPCC.
In the UK, within the NHS at least, I always thought that there was the possibility to use non-registered treatments within strict guidelines.
Suppose it depends on the specific treatment. Maybe the "vaccine" they have created is specific to the monkey and its version of Ebola and now they're heading down the right path it's switching to working on a human one, rather than a universal vaccine that treats the monkey and humans but they just don't know the human side effects. ... I'm clearly not a scientist lol
I was listening to radio again there. Apparently the problem with containment (other than the obvious resource issues)in the effected countries is twofold 1) the population have heard it's incurable and have included untreatable with that. When there is actually a little can be done if gotten to early. Fluids etc etc... 2) on top of that you have a people who have no experience of government health care suddenly seeing dudes in spacesuits turning up telling them they're here to treat the incurable disease and have reacted with hostility.
Listening to Jeremy Vine on R2 yesterday, and apparently it's a symbiotic virus that lives fine and dandy in bats, harming neither of them. This being the case, surely there's a vaccine there somewhere? Wonder if Batman would be immune?
Evolutionary theory predicts that incipient viruses are more harmful and then evolve into gradually more harmless strains, as a virus which kills 100% of it's hosts quickly, for example, is very poor at passing itself onto other hosts and therefore is more likely to die out. This has been proven in many, many instances in viruses, even HIV, where a less harmful strain was discovered in Africa where it is suspected the human form of the virus originated. The predictive power of evolutionary theory is one of the main reasons it's one of the greatest and most-confirmed theories in the whole of science, not just Biology. Probably. Good old Bats!
We live in the UK which is part of the European Union, home to some of the best medical facilities on earth. Any outbreak would be contained and stopped very quickly. Like it does every other time. we have a new 'worst virus ever' outbreak every 6 months. Usually some form of animal flu or a long thought dead virus from yesteryear. Nothing to worry about right now unless you are paranoid.
It's not air borne and once again this seems like a sisu scare thread.... Not even going to get into it as others seem to have done a good job of it so far! Far worse things to worry about than a bit of Ebola causing trouble in Africa.
I would never disrespect that man: he's my idol! Flawed like any other person, but smart, a nice-guy and a genius at marshalling evidence. Easily my favourite historical figure. But I'm a biologist so I'm biased. (As are you, I'm sure! )
WHO: The outbreak is spreading faster than our efforts to control it. This outbreak is moving faster than our efforts to control it," WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said Friday http://rt.com/news/177564-ebola-outbreak-catastrophic-who/
