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posted by chromas on Wednesday October 30 2019, @03:41PM   Printer-friendly

'Game changing' tuberculosis vaccine a step closer

A vaccine which could "revolutionise" tuberculosis treatment has been unveiled by researchers.

It is hoped the vaccine will provide long-term protection against the disease, which kills 1.5 million people around the world each year.

The highly contagious disease is caused by bacteria, and the current vaccine, the BCG jab, is not very effective.

However, while initial trials have proved successful, the vaccine is still a few years away from being licensed.

The team of researchers, who come from all over the world, revealed the vaccine, which is made up of proteins from bacteria which trigger an immune response, during a global summit on lung health in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad on Tuesday.

It has already cleared a critical phase of clinical trials and been tested on more than 3,500 adults in TB endemic regions of South Africa, Kenya and Zambia, researchers said.

Also at NYT.

Related: Tuberculosis: Pharmacists Develop New Substance to Counteract Antimicrobial Resistance
How a New Antibiotic Destroys Extremely Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30 2019, @05:04PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30 2019, @05:04PM (#913792)

    That is pretty hilarious since the guy who was head of the CDC at the time (Alex Langmuir) basically said "why not vaccinate for measles? We should do it just because we can". Then he predicted measles would be eradicated by 1967. No understood why he cared, because it was a total non-issue.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday October 30 2019, @06:51PM (2 children)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday October 30 2019, @06:51PM (#913826) Journal

    An antivaxxer who is completely ignorant? How surprising!

    It's impressive how you manage to even get the facts that are irrelevant to your argument wrong, though, so let's review.

    That is pretty hilarious since the guy who was head of the CDC at the time (Alex Langmuir)

    Alex Langmuir was never in charge of the CDC. The measles vaccine was invented in 1963. [cdc.gov] The head of the CDC in 1963 was James L. Goddard, MD, MPH [cdc.gov]
    Alexander Langmuir was the head of some chemical warfare agency. [wikipedia.org]

    "why not vaccinate for measles? We should do it just because we can".

    Or, y'know, the 2.6 million people who were dying globally every year. [who.int]

    Then he predicted measles would be eradicated by 1967. No understood why he cared, because it was a total non-issue..

    In 1978, CDC set a goal to eliminate measles from the United States by 1982. [cdc.gov]
    Measles was declared eliminated (absence of continuous disease transmission for greater than 12 months) from the United States in 2000. [cdc.gov]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30 2019, @09:13PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30 2019, @09:13PM (#913885)

      Parents largely came to see measles as an unpleasant, although more or less inevitable, part of childhood. Many primary care physicians shared this view.
              [...]
              In the United States and Western Europe, which did, measles mortality was low and declining and parents seemingly accepted it as an unpleasant part of childhood. What reasons could there be for introducing a measles vaccine?
              [...]
              There seemed to be no reason to begin a mass immunization program; the decision to immunize could be left to individual medical practitioners and parents.
              [...]
              Any decision to begin mass measles vaccination in the early 1960s thus involved numerous uncertainties. Was the disease serious enough? Would parents feel it worth having their children vaccinated?
              [...]
                  in 1967 a campaign was launched to eliminate measles from the United States. “To those who ask me ‘Why do you wish to eradicate measles?’” wrote Alexander Langmuir, chief epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1949 to 1970,

                      I reply with the same answer that Hillary used when asked why he wished to climb Mt. Everest. He said “Because it is there.” To this may be added, “… and it can be done.”16

              [...]
              There is a real danger that the general public may become weary of the ever-increasing number of immunizing injections which are being urged upon their children. The administration of this [inactivated] vaccine would require three further injections. Measles is often regarded as a normal part of childhood development, and though this view is misguided parents may not easily be persuaded to depart from it.
              [...]
              One must consider whether those caring for the child will readily accept prevention of what is generally an unproblematic illness and/or whether this could lead to resistance against vaccination and attendance at the children’s clinic
              [...]
              Parents, it was hoped, would gradually come to accept the desirability of vaccinating against what was widely seen as an unpleasant, although inevitable, childhood illness.

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4007870/ [nih.gov]

      The Center for Disease Control (CDC) led in mounting the program with a formal paper at the American Public Health Association annual meeting in Miami in the fall of 1966. Two colleagues and I wrote the “official statement” which outlined in detail unqualified statements about the epidemiology of measles and made an unqualified prediction. My third position in the authorship of this paper did not adequately reflect my contribution to the work.14 I will make but two quotes:
                      1. “The infection spreads by direct contact from person to person, and by the airborne route among susceptibles congregated in enclosed spaces.” (Obviously the ideas of Perkins and Wells had penetrated my consciousness but not sufficiently to influence my judgment). 2. “Effective use of (measles) vaccines during the coming winter and spring should insure the eradication of measles from the United States in 1967.” Such was my faith in the broad acceptance of the vaccine by the public and the health professions and in the infallibility of herd immunity.
                      [...]
              There are many reasons and explanations for this rather egregious blunder in prediction. The simple truth is that the prediction was based on confidence in the Reed-Frost epidemic theory, in the applicability of herd immunity on a general basis, and that measles cases were uniformly infectious. I am sure I extended the teachings of my preceptors beyond the limits that they had intended during my student days.

              In the relentless light of the well-focussed retrospectiscope, the real failure was our neglect of conducting continuous and sufficiently sophisticated epidemiological field studies of measles. We accepted the doctrines imbued into us as students wikout maintaining the eternal skepticism of the true scientist.
                      [...]
              Clearly we must revise our theory and recognize that these outbreaks must be airborne in character involving exposure to aerosols presumably created by the rare super-spreader who contaminates a large populated enclosed space such as a school auditorium or gymnasium. These have happened sufficiently often to prove the far sightedness of Perkins and Wells when the rest of us were smugly secure in our epidemic theories, our traditional faith in contact infection and herd immunity.

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6939399 [nih.gov]

      I've noticed your posts here are almost always filled with wrong stuff. You should check what you are considering a reliable source (which seems to be some kind of firehose of DNC propaganda).

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @01:56PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @01:56PM (#914103)

        Looking at those posts, it seems clear that "[Langmuir] became director of the epidemiology branch of the National Communicable Disease Center in Atlanta, a position he held for over 20 years."

        Though it is true he was never CDC director, only director of epidemiology at the CDC.