Immunity Health News

The Washington Post reported Wednesday on the $15 million dollar grant given to the University of Maryland’s Dr. Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of the HIV virus, to develop a possible HIV vaccine. The grant comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

At the same time, Juvaris BioTherapeutics, located in Pleasanton, reported the award of a $9 million grant over a five-year period for the purpose of researching a way to increase the effectiveness of the flu vaccine. (More.)

And then we also have the report that money from G8 countries to develop vaccines for the poor is possibly being misspent, while large pharmaceutical companies rake in profits.

So it’s not surprising that small-time “entrepreneurs” are recognizing the business potential of vaccines: seventeen men were arrested in China this week for selling fake rabies vaccines. Apparently 227 people were administered a “vaccine” consisting of starch and water.

Earlier, I blogged about the Kenyan prostitutes who were immune to HIV.

Having now quit the profession, they have become infected, and scientists are hypothesizing that it was their continued exposure to the virus which was rendering them immune.

Efforts to develop a vaccine remain undaunted, the scientists say.

Read the whole article.

A recent blog post is reporting a study in the British Medical Journal about the potential rise in antibiotic resistance in the general public as a result of overprescription.

The authors believe these results show that prescribing amoxicillin to a child doubles the risk of finding antibiotic resistant strains in that child later. They warn that although this effect is temporary in the individual child, it may be sufficient to sustain a high level of antibiotic resistance in the population.

Read the published study.

Here’s the link to the whole article.

No mention, though, of whether they’ve had any success with the vaccine in animals. I think if I were the Vietnamese “volunteer” I’d want some assurance going in!

Researchers funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation have used a new approach to rapidly develop and discover a malaria vaccine.

Using information from the recently sequenced parasitic genome, the researchers synthesized hundreds of short α-helical coiled coil protein segments (30-40 amino acids long) that are able to maintain their tertiary (3-d) structure. These proteins are found on the malaria parasite in its erythrocytic phase (when it passes from the liver back into the bloodstream).

Tested with malaria-immune human blood sera, the peptide-specific antibodies inhibited parasite growth in vitro.

Read more about the malaria life cycle.

Read the original research article, published in PLoS ONE.

A new book set to be published later this month in Great Britain claims that the British government is misleading people about its infant vaccination program.

The book, The Truth About Vaccines, by Dr. Richard Halvorsen, claims that “there are unfounded claims about [vaccines'] safety and effectiveness and I believe [the vaccinations] may be doing potentially serious harm to hundreds if not thousands of children every year.”

As an example, Dr. Halvorsen says a brand of MMR was brought on the market even though the Government was aware of its dangers. It was withdrawn four years later after increasing reports of deaths and brain damage.

He says risks have not been properly assessed because, unlike drugs, vaccines in Britain do not have to undergo proper long-term safety trials.

Read the whole article for more information on the additives and possible dangers associated with infant vaccinations.

About 4800 parents of autistic children believe their children’s autism is a result of vaccination.

Their theory is that thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative once included in many vaccines and removed from most in 1999, can combine with the measles, mumps and rubella vaccination to damage the immune system. This damage, they said, can lead to autism, a developmental disorder characterized by speech and often severe social impairments.

The petitioners want access to the $2.5-billion Vaccine Injury Compensation Trust Fund established by Congress two decades ago, and have brought their case to the Vaccine Court.

An arm of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, the vaccine court consists of judges, called special masters, who determine whether people who say they or their children have been harmed by vaccines deserve compensation.

On June 26, three special masters finished listening to the first case in the Omnibus Autism Proceedings, brought by the parents of Michelle Cedillo, 12, of Arizona. In large part, the hearing served as a time for each side — the families and experts retained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — to present its first argument.

The court is expected to hear three tests and then make a ruling on those. If they side with the parents, the court is likely to set up a framework for compensation to the others.

Read the whole article.

Here’s a story to make you think twice about any new vaccines being offered in the neighbourhood:

A polio vaccine introduced in mid-2005 in Uttar Pradesh (India) by the World Health Organization has failed to prevent 56 people from contracting polio, and there is even suggestion that the vaccine itself is the cause.

The kind of blame shifting and selective follow-ups reported remind me of The Constant Gardener.

Click here to read the whole article.

Researchers from VIB and Ghent University are beginning Phase I of human testing of their new Universal Flu Vaccine.

that is, the candidate vaccine is being administered to a small group of healthy people in order to verify the safety of the product and to provide an initial insight into the vaccine’s effect on the human immune system.

While the external structure of all flu viruses changes each year through mutation — thus becoming unrecognizeable to our immune systems antibodies and requiring a new vaccine — all human flu viruses known carry the so-called M2 protein on their surface, and it is this which the vaccine targets.

There is much controversy concerning overvaccination. Keeping in mind that flu viruses cause 3 to 5 million hospitalizations and 250,000 to 500,000 deaths per year, and the looming threat of a pandemic flu virus like the Spanish Flu of 1918, perhaps this vaccine would be worth consideration.

Read more.

In case you care about the welfare of all those poor mice whose immune systems are worked on for our benefit, news from the Times Online says that the new research will be done exclusively with computers.

Scientists are predicting an end to the era of human and animal drug testing, saying that computer models will one day become so advanced that they will be able to predict the body’s response to various substances.

The use of computer models would bring “unprecedented benefits” to medicine, and possibly even dispense with the need for drugs altogether, as doctors discovered ways to prompt the body’s own immune system to react to threats, rather than introduce artificial remedies, they said. Read the whole article.

(Forgive the Star Trek theme the last couple of days. I don’t know what’s come over me.)