Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by CoolHand on Wednesday May 20 2015, @08:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the positive-effects-of-the-blockade dept.

The Center for American Progress reports

During the 55-year, United States-led trade embargo, the Cuban government used what little resources it had to spur innovation in preventative medicine. Now, with the newly normalized relationship between the U.S. and the small Caribbean nation, American researchers want to seize an opportunity to expand access to Cuba's medical investments.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) recently visited Havana to broker a deal between between cancer researchers in his state and Cuban officials, who have created a potentially promising therapeutic vaccine against lung cancer that is headed to the United States for clinical trials.

The Cuban Ministry of Health made the vaccine, named CimaVax, available to the public in 2011 after researchers at Cuba's Center for Molecular Immunology tweaked the formula for 25 years. At a dollar per shot, the government has been able to protect Cubans against what has become the fourth-leading cause of death in the country by attacking proteins that cause cancerous tumors to grow.

CimaVax slows the growth of cancerous cells by stimulating the body's immune response and spurring the creation of antibodies that stunt the development of tumors. While the vaccine doesn't totally cure the lung cancer, it extends life expectancy by four to six months and reduces symptoms like coughing and breathlessness, as seen in clinical trials conducted in 2008.

[...]Japan and some European countries have launched trial studies of their own to explore Cimavax's potential.

[...]Since the launch of Rural Medical Service in the 1960s and the subsequent revitalization of health care networks for poor Cubans, the focus on prevention, rather than treatment, has helped the island nation keep its health care costs in check. Annual health care costs average about $300 per person--more than 20 times less than that of American patients.

TechDirt notes

Cuban scientists have come up with their own vaccines for meningitis B and hepatitis B, and monoclonal antibodies for kidney transplants. That suggests the success of the "do more with less" approach isn't just a one-off, but can be applied consistently to deliver results.

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday May 20 2015, @09:23PM

    by frojack (1554) on Wednesday May 20 2015, @09:23PM (#185732) Journal

    The US embargo was porous as hell. It wasn't effective against Cuban trade with Canada, Mexico, most of Europe, and certainly not the former Soviet Union nor the Russian Federation, or China.

    They had access to training and collaboration, Journals and yes, drugs, even US patented drugs quietly manufactured over seas, for decades.

    No doubt the newest western drugs were priced out of Cuban reach, so they refined the older drugs over the decades.
    Surprise: that's exactly what big pharma does around the world for 90 percent of the drugs we have.

    So yeah, maybe they should seek some investment money to ramp up their drug manufacturing and pull in money from world wide sales, not only from what they invent at home, but all the generics that are falling off of patent protection. India has been doing a lot of that recently.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday May 20 2015, @10:20PM

    by sjames (2882) on Wednesday May 20 2015, @10:20PM (#185760) Journal

    Didn't you just castigate someone else for not reading the summary? We DID NOT have the drugs the summary is talking about. Cuba didn't grab them off the generics market and big pharma had nothing to do with their development (or success) in Cuba.

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday May 20 2015, @11:37PM

      by frojack (1554) on Wednesday May 20 2015, @11:37PM (#185792) Journal

      The article say NOTHING about the source of the drug, or what it was based on.
      Only that Cuba has been tweaking it for 25 years. Who knows what they started with?

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday May 21 2015, @12:04AM

        by sjames (2882) on Thursday May 21 2015, @12:04AM (#185808) Journal

        After 25 years of tweaking, it's certainly not much like what it was before the embargo came down. Let's be honest, if some group of islanders working in silence for 25 years and turned aspirin into the cure for the common cold would you scoff and claim they got it from Bayer?

        If it has any connection with American pharma, it's homeopathic by now.

        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday May 21 2015, @01:31AM

          by frojack (1554) on Thursday May 21 2015, @01:31AM (#185839) Journal

          Phages are indeed homeopathy. This not so much.

          But you assume I meant American Pharma, while I said no such thing.

          All I meant was that you can not assume that they did this solely on their own, when they were a client state of the Soviet Union for decades. You can not assume the embargo had any effect one way or another.

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.