A cure for ebola?
They used small interfering RNAs or siRNAs, a new technology being developed by a number of companies, to hold the virus at bay for a week until the immune system could take over. Tests in four rhesus monkeys showed that seven daily injections cured 100 per cent of them.
I like a hundred percent. Of course, it’s a small sample.
Keep in mind that the Mail is not known for the skills of its fact checkers…
bear in mind that a very small percentage of tests that work in monkeys
work in humans.
Same story, alternate source: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2810%2960357-1/fulltext Only a summary appears to be free access, but enough to validate the story.
Via http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=6190
While this is most exciting for viral infections without a current treatment or cure, the method could apply to a variety of viruses with a stable stretch of genetic material to target.
I’m sure this pace will pick up when the government controls all the money going into the health care system. What could go wrong?
I saw a documentary about AIDS in Zambia last night – “The Lazarus Effect”, free on YouTube Red Channel. I was astounded by the way they talked about ARV’s (anti-retrovirals) – it was like they were just a given. As though, at some point in the early 2000’s, some beneficent hand (God, the Zambian government, Butros Butros Gali) sprinkled them across the land like manna. Not even a mention of the evil capitalist society and the greed-mongering pharmaceutical companies that developed the drugs and now give them away at or below cost to the poor of the world.
I mean, it’s really amazing: AIDS in the United States started out as, and still remains, a disease that primarily effects homosexuals. I am not making a judgment on homosexuality here, but I am making a judgment on human nature. Anywhere else, AIDS would have been ignored at best. Here? We mobilized hundreds of billions over the course of 25 years and we cured it, and now we give it away to the less fortunate. No other culture in human history has ever had the combination of empathy and expendable resources to do something like that. Not even close.
And yet, not a mention of it in the documentary.
Roga: Well put.
If you wrote this on your blog you’d deserve an instalanch
Yes, Roga, well put indeed. The empathy and generosity of Western Civilization is without precedent, and you said it very well. I don’t have anything to add but I wanted to get my appreciation out there along with Fred’s.