DailyDirt: Deadly Diseases Besides Ebola
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Ebola is scary. Absolutely. It’s concerning that Ebola vaccines and treatments have not been developed as quickly as other pharmaceuticals, but the current outbreak is certainly speeding up research efforts. However, the economics of developing treatments for various ailments isn’t always rational, given the examples of the wild success of the ALS ice bucket challenge and the failures of its knockoffs. If you need a reminder of other deadly diseases that still plague the world, here are just a few links on the topic.
- The US govt has stopped (temporarily?) funding for “gain-of-function (GOF)” experiments that could make viruses more pathogenic. This policy doesn’t stop amateurs and other researchers (or Nature itself!) from creating more deadly mutations, but it could slow down the progress of developing ways to fight off certain diseases and understanding how some pathogens (eg influenza) might mutate. [url]
- A number of diseases pose far larger threats than Ebola does. There has been a re-emergence of measles, pertussis (or whooping cough) and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The flu still kills thousands of people every year. [url]
- The WHO warns that multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is a global threat to human health. The US saw a bit under 10,000 cases of TB in 2013 and 1.4% of those were drug resistant. Worldwide, 9 million people caught TB last year, and about 3.5% of those were resistant to antibiotics. [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: antibiotics, disease, ebola, flu, gof, health, influenza, mdr-tb, measles, medicine, mrsa, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, pathogens, tb, vaccines, virus, whooping cough
Comments on “DailyDirt: Deadly Diseases Besides Ebola”
not to provoke a stampede to the exits...
but the CDC has conceded it can be spread with a cough-like aerosol in about a 3′ range…
but sneezes go about 20′, so better stay at least 25′ away from everyone…
oh, except some euro-boffins (as el reg is wont to headline) have determined approx 13% of those infected can be asymptomatic, yet still be carriers and infectious…
and did i mention they find the cold/drier conditions of winter allow it to survive about 50 days in the wild ? ? ?
but who needs a surgeon general…
The “flu kills thousands every year” is questionable. I’ve heard (can’t find the source at the moment) that the figure of “30,000 flu deaths per year” comes from counting anyone who exhibited flu symptoms up to a few months before death and then subsequently died of anything in any way resembling flu symptoms. The people counted in this way are disproportionately elderly, and this methodology ends up catching a lot of people who simply did what used to be referred to as “dying of old age.”
Does anyone know anything more solid on this topic? I’ve heard the claim and it sounds like it makes sense, but that doesn’t necessarily means it’s correct.
“The WHO warns that multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is a global threat to human health.”
When did the Who find time to study medicine?
Re: Re:
Are you kidding? The Who’s medical research alone is amazing. For many, many years, they have personally tested a huge variety of pharmaceuticals and experimental drugs. None of this mamby pamby animal testing for those guys.
biological weapons
It’s not known how many deadly diseases have been created in United States (and former Soviet) biological weapons laboratories. The deadly (military-grade) anthrax mailings that quickly came and went over a decade ago may have been just the tip of the iceberg. There’s no question that Ebola is being looked at very closely at as a potential addition to the Pentagon’s ever-growing bological weapons stockpile.
Re: biological weapons
Putting on the tin foil hat –
It already is a part of the biological weapons stockpile. The current situation is a test of the efficacy of using ebola as a weapon against various populations.
Taking off tin foil hat –
Biological weapons development has been an ongoing field of study for many decades by many different groups (both governmental and commercial) and there has been many indicators in the biological papers area that there has been much success in the development of such weaponry.
Just a FYI to everyone...
Today is the day, 100 years ago, Jonas Stalk was born.
In 1955, he discovered the cure to Polio, but chose to not patent it, allowing everyone easy access to the cure.
Had he patented it, he may have made over 7 billion dollars in his lifetime.
Re: Just a FYI to everyone...
“In 1955, he discovered the cure to Polio”
You mean polio vaccine. Even today, and as with most viral infections, there is no cure.
And due to the CIA’s fake polio vaccination program, many people across the globe are refusing to vaccinate their children for anything any more.
Re: Re: Just a FYI to everyone...
Yes, I meant Vaccine.
Re: Just a FYI to everyone...
I think you may mean Jonas Salk
Watch. bite the wax tadpole
Why do so many spam-bots have to use broken English? Don’t the Chinese have any decent online translators?
Thank you, anti-vaxxers
> There has been a re-emergence of measles, pertussis
It’s disingenuous to state this without stating the reason why: anti-vaccination propaganda has destroyed the herd immunity against these diseases in many locations.
We can trust our “mommy instincts”… to kill what? a few pro-mil of our children? (Compared with vaccination itself causing serious injury only in single digits per million, if that much).
Oh, that was “thank” with an “f”…
Re: Thank you, anti-vaxxers
This is what happens when people get their medical advice from watching the Oprah Winfrey show (and that includes that crackpot doctor in her employ).
Or do people really believe that posing naked for Playboy makes one a medical expert?
Ewbola
But Ebola is way more icky and messy and gross than all those other more deadly diseases!
It’s a horrifying disease, so it’s going to generate more panic.