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Our Tax Dollars Spent On Experimental Ebola Vaccine |
From
Patricia Doyle |
| Hello Jeff - They are now spending millions of
dollars to vaccinate front line health care workers in Sierra Leone with
EXPERIMENTAL Ebola vaccine. The use the West African strain of Ebola virus and that strain is known and documented to cause AFTER illness symptoms and even cause blindness and joint pain etc. How safe is this vaccine using this strain. Science has no idea as to why the people who survive this strain of Ebola have symptoms yet they are using this strain in live vaccine trials. It is a matter of time before we see more Ebola flights of our three Ebola planes for the CDC. Seems like after every vaccination campaign with this virus we hear of health care workers headed to the US exposed to Ebola. Hum? Makes ya wonder. Patty Testing of Ebola vaccine is underway in Sierra Leone Liz Szabo, USA TODAY 2:36 p.m. EDT April 14, 2015 Sierra Leone has begun testing an experimental Ebola vaccine, officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Tuesday. The $25 million study, funded through $5.4 billion in Ebola aid authorized by Congress, will test vaccines on 6,000 "front-line workers," including doctors, nurses, burial workers and others, who are at highest risk of the disease. But with only a handful of new Ebola cases being reported now in Sierra Leone, it may be difficult to get a clear answer on whether the vaccine actually works, the CDC acknowledges. If there are no new cases of Ebola among vaccinated volunteers, for example, researchers won't know if that's the result of the immunizations or because the outbreak has faded. New Ebola cases in West Africa are at their lowest level since May, according to the World Health Organization. Just 30 new cases were reported in the week that ended April 5, including 21 in Guinea and nine in Sierra Leone. Liberia had no new cases that week. Ebola has sickened 25,611 people and killed 10,611 since the outbreak began in December 2013, according to the WHO. "Ebola has been devastating for West Africa," said Anne Schuchat,director of the CDC's National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases. "I hope this is the beginning of a new, positive chapter." The vaccine being rolled out in Sierra Leone was developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada and licensed to NewLink Genetics, which has licensed the vaccine to Merck. The vaccine has been tested on 800 people in Africa, Canada, Europe and the USA. A second Ebola vaccine, developed at the National Institutes of Health and GlaxoSmithKline, is also in clinical trials in West Africa. The Sierra Leone vaccine trial will focus on front-line Ebola workers because they have been hit hard by the disease; 861 health workers have been infected with Ebola and 499 have died. More than 200 people have been enrolled and 90 have received the vaccine, Schuchat said Tuesday. There are no approved therapies or vaccines for Ebola. Government researchers in the USA and elsewhere have rushed experimental drugs and vaccines into clinical testing because of the epidemic. Early studies suggest that both Ebola vaccines are safe. Side effects of the vaccine now being tested in Sierra Leone have included fatigue, headache, muscle ache, and rare cases of mild joint pain and swelling that go away on their own, Schuchat said. The new studies in West Africa will paint a clearer picture of those side effects, telling doctors how often they occur and how serious they are, said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Even if the study doesn't provide definitive answers on the vaccine's efficacy, Schuchat said the Food and Drug Administration could consider approving it based on data from animals. Researchers also will measure how volunteers' immune systems respond to the shots. CDC officials never considered canceling the trial, in spite of the falling number of new cases, she said. Health workers continue to be infected with Ebola and to be at substantial risk of the disease, Schuchat said. Last month, an American health worker was rushed back to the USA from Sierra Leone after becoming infected while caring for patients. That health workers, who has not been identified, was treated at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., and discharged last week. "It's very important that we move these experimental Ebola vaccines along as far as possible so they are in a position to be used definitively in the next Ebola outbreak, where they may significantly impact the trajectory of cases," said Amesh Adalja, senior associate at the Center for Health Security at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. "It is important to keep the momentum going," Adalja said. "The more human data we can obtain on Ebola vaccines, the better. The partnerships and the collaboration necessary for a trial is also a benefit that will pay dividends in the event of future infectious disease outbreaks." In related news, the African Union announced that it has formed an African Centresfor Disease Control and Prevention, which is being formed with the support of the CDC. The African CDC, expected to open later this year, will aim to detect infectious disease outbreaks and respond to them quickly. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/04/14/ebola-vaccine-sierra-leone/25763899/ |
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