Posted on 10/20/2014 4:28:36 AM PDT by bert
We have technology to potentially control Ebola and other viral outbreaks today. But the federal bureaucracy refuses to catch up with 21st-century science. For example, diagnostic startup Nanobiosym has an iPhone-sized device that can accurately detect Ebola and other infectious diseases in less than an hour. Two other companies, Synthetic Genomics and Novartis, have the capacity to create synthetic vaccine viruses for influenza and other infectious diseases in only four days. Both firms can also share data about outbreaks instantaneously and make real-time, geographically specific diagnosis and vaccine production possible. These companies could start producing Ebola vaccine/treatments tomorrow — except that the Food and Drug Administration’s insistence on randomized studies and endless demands for more data means firms have to spend millions on paperwork instead of producing medicines. And for every small company drained by such tactics, many others conclude it’s not even worth trying. These advances aren’t available because the FDA is using 19th-century science to decide which medical technologies should be used in the 21st century.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
To do almost anything worthwhile you now have to leave the US.
SAD!
Three years ago, Obama’s head of health disasters, Nicole Lurie, transferred money from a legitimate company, working on an Ebola treatment to a company that was owned by an Obama donor. The donor company went bankrupt without producing anything, it was another Solyndra.
Without those studies, how are we supposed to know if a drug or vaccine actually works? Just because a drug cures an animal of a disease does not mean it will do the same in humans. There are many drugs that work very well in rodents or monkeys that do nothing for humans.
There is a big problem in trying to test if Ebola drugs or vaccines work in humans. The problem is that we cannot expose people to Ebola to see if a drug or vaccine works. Politics and funding have nothing to do with this.
My supervisor thinks we should test these things on prisoners. I'm sure many people would agree with him. However, ethics committees (and probably laws) would prevent such testing.
Because the government REALLY blocks medicine that can cure deadly viruses. What a bunch of nonsense. If that were the case, then why even cure anything?
As much as I would like to see a quick cure for ebola, I’m old enough to remember the thalidomide tragedies. Unfortunately, we have to take it slow and easy when developing new drugs………..
“This is an interesting commentary on how big government is basically dysfunctional. “
Decades ago I worked for the company that built 80% of the world’s civilian aircraft crash recorders, the “black boxes.” (They were actually orange and yellow with black stripes.) We needed to go from carbon resistors to metal film. It was a no-risk engineering change which improved the unit’s producibility and reliability. For nearly a year the FCC failed to approve the change. In frustration, as we were out of carbon resistors, I called our permanent employee at the FCC’s building. He told me that each Monday he’d start walking the change around the building for signature, but frequently, the people who needed to sign were not there that week. Around Thursday people who had signed already would hunt him up and look at the signature sheet. If it wasn’t approved they’d take their signatures off the sheet. This is because if there was a crash over the weekend and the cause was traced to a resistor they didn’t want their names on a document that would have affected a change unless everybody had signed it off. This was the case with everything we submitted to the government.
I concluded that the purpose of federal agencies was to protect themselves and their members, not the public.
As long as a prisoner would allow pharmaceutical companies to test cures on them, that would bypass FDA human trials. I would have absolutely zero problem with it. In a controlled environment of course. With very little to no chance of any deadly germ spreading. There would be little problem with it from my point of view.
Lifers or death row inmates could do something productive to help other people. However, they should not be able to escape their sentence in doing so. A fair trade would be cushy medical facilities to spend their sentence in, and/or a nice check to the victims of said convict and possibly a check to said convicts family depending on the type and severity of crime. Many would die in the process, but the knowledge gained would be priceless. I’m thinking that this would be a grey area still, nonetheless. I have to think about this more.
Cushy jobs with endless perks (lobbying) breed this type of behavior.
The American frontier was not won safely and a step at a time. Nor was the race to the moon. Nor the discovery of the new world. No significant development in technology, medicine or exploration has been without mortal danger and chaos.
Except when there are a pool of people, infected with Ebola, who face probable death, and who would likely jump at the chance to help with testing. All we would have to do is give the vaccine to one population and see if the death rate is much lower than the control population.
But since the majority of the potential testers are poor Africans, politics and "optics" become dominant.
Which studies proved that the polio vaccine worked?
Did they spend years on those studies before they rolled out the vaccine?
“diagnostic startup Nanobiosym has an iPhone-sized device that can accurately detect Ebola and other infectious diseases in less than an hour.”
That is great as long as it works without many false negatives or false positives. That should be put into effect immediately, since either way it is no risk, as long as accuracy levels are clearly declared.
” synthetic vaccine viruses for influenza and other infectious diseases in only four days. ... except that the Food and Drug Administration’s insistence on randomized studies and endless demands for more data means firms have to spend millions on paperwork instead of producing medicines. “
Wow. You apparently haven’t read much about the dangers of vaccinations. Remember vaccinations are for infecting those NOT infected. A big health problem in this country is vaccinations that should NEVER have gotten approval. Read a few books on the topic from both sides of the argument.
The polio vaccine was a fiasco that caused many deaths and paralysis. http://www.whale.to/a/mcbean5.html
Polio was uncommon and its frequency in America rose dramatically in exact timing and degree to which DDT, lead arsenate and calcium arsenate use ramped up. Then the vaccines “cured” (with no consideration of other long term effects) it when DDT was banned. Do some research. google polio DDT OR arsenate
A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread
By the time an outbreak is established, you have your control population data already. Untreated infected versus dead would comprise the control, and that part is already known.
I won’t argue with you on the pharma stuff. However, the device side for detecting the virus should not be held up and in fact should be expedited as it demonstrates no direct risk to the patient.
I was refuting the statement that ‘we need studies to prove they work before we can use them’.
That hasn’t happened in the past, why is it happening now?
Ask them if they want the liability for going to market without FDA approval.
Eva :"Three years ago, Obama’s head of health disasters, Nicole Lurie, transferred money from a legitimate company,
working on an Ebola treatment to a company that was owned by an Obama donor.(emphasis mine)
The donor company went bankrupt without producing anything, it was another Solyndra."
Expect more of the same , especially now that we have the Solyndra manager now as the Ebola czar.
He is a fixer, to tame the language of the media, or spin-meister , or the "social engineer" of the media .
Expcect more agenda driven deceit ; truth is an unknown quality in this administration!
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