Posted on 05/23/2004 3:50:25 PM PDT by blam
China begins testing SARS vaccine on humans
May 23 2004 at 10:42AM
Beijing - China has started testing a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) vaccine on humans in the latest effort to find a way to protect people from the respiratory disease which killed nearly 800 people and wreaked havoc on the region's economy last year.
Four people, aged between 20 and 40, on Saturday were given the vaccine, which has been jointly developed by China's Science and Technology Ministry and the Beijing Kexing Vaccine Company, the Beijing Youth Daily said.
They became the first humans to be given the vaccine, which had already been tested on goats, horses and monkeys and had been successful in preventing the animals from contracting the potentially deadly SARS virus, it said on Sunday.
The patients will be monitored in coming days by the Beijing-based Sino-Japanese Friendship Hospital.
They are among 36 volunteers who have agreed to serve as guinea pigs for the vaccine.
Scientists on China's SARS vaccine research team had said earlier the first phase of testing would last three months in Beijing, southern Guangdong province or neighboring Guangxi region.
The first phase of human testing will determine if it is safe and effective.
SARS vaccine development is being actively pursued, but experts predict it could take several years before a vaccine is developed.
Singapore's acting health minister Khaw Boon Wan said in April it would take scientists four to five years to develop a SARS vaccine.
Hans-Dieter Klenk, the head of an association of German virologists said this month during the first international conference on SARS, held in Germany, that there was a good chance a vaccine would be found within three years.
US researchers last month announced an experimental vaccine against SARS that had had successful results in lab mice.
SARS originally emerged in south China's Guangdong province at the end of 2002, and eventually struck 32 countries, infecting 8 000 people and killing close to 800 before subsiding.
China was worst hit, accounting for 349 fatalities and 5 327 infections.
Since China was declared SARS-free last July, four new confirmed cases were reported in Guangdong this winter, and nine other cases in a recent outbreak this spring, all linked to a virology institute in Beijing, including one victim who later died.
This is good. When I first saw the article my first thought was "Do the subjects know this?"
Yeah,this is good. They probably had their sentences in the slave labor camps cut in half for volunteering.
You've been around since 1998 and this is the first time I've ever seen your screen name. "chickenlips," LOL!
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