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Science & Technology
New Ebola Drug Effective In Monkeys
2010-05-30
The Ebola virus first emerged in 1976, striking fear with the uncontrollable bleeding it causes and mortality rates up to 90 percent. Ever since then, scientists have been struggling to find a way to treat the infection or protect against it.

There has been progress, but nothing quite like the report in the May 28 issue of the scientific journal The Lancet.
No offense, but I'll believe it when the paper has been accepted for publication in a respected medical journal that isn't The Lancet. They've developed a bit of a reputation for accepting papers based on agenda-driven bad science -- remember the claims about deaths in Iraq caused by the 2003 invasion, or the claims about childhood vaccines causing autism?
A team led by Thomas Geisbert of Boston University has used an experimental drug to protect monkeys from death after injecting them with massive doses of the most lethal strain of Ebola.

"We were stunned," Geisbert says. "I've been working with this virus for my whole career -- 23 or 24 years -- and we've had some mild successes where maybe we could go up to 50 percent protection," he said. "But I was really shocked that we got complete protection."

Virologist Heinz Feldmann of the National Institute on Allergies and Infectious Diseases, who often collaborates with Geisbert but was not involved in this work, called the results "a milestone" -- and not just for treatment of Ebola.

"I think this will most likely also work for other related viral hemorrhagic fevers," Feldmann said, such as Marburg, Lassa and Crimean-Congo fever. All are deadly to one degree or another and cause outbreaks in Africa and elsewhere.
Posted by: Anonymoose

#3  "No offense, but I'll believe it when the paper has been accepted for publication in a respected medical journal that isn't The Lancet."

FTFY, tw.

The only offense is the one consistently committed by the once-respected but now-disreputable lying liars Lancet.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2010-05-30 20:57  

#2  A bit elaborate, but certainly in the running for "Snark of the Day".
Posted by: Victor Emmanuel Slaing8480   2010-05-30 15:10  

#1  well that's a disaster.

We need diseases to keep the population down. There are too many people in the world. Fish stocks are collapsing. Pollution is rising. Cheap oil is running out.

Look what happened at Easter Island, it is a microcosm of planet earth.

Collapse from overpopulation comes swiftly not slowly. It happens in the space of a couple of generations when people have too many kids and those kids have too many kids.

Culturally those people that believe they have the right to have 9 and 10 kids are strangling the planet. Then the developed world has to stump up the aid money to feed them!

noooo leave the viruses alone they are there for a reason.
Posted by: anon1   2010-05-30 03:32  

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