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[M3d10n]

How did you think vaccines work?

your body contains trillions of randomly generated shapes of antibodies. a foreign agent such as a virus has antigens which your body attempts to find an appropriate antibody for. Until it finds the antibody which binds to the antigen, it uses other, more primitive, brute force methods of containing the virus... raising its internal temperature to cook the virus, and also basically carpet-bombing the site of infection (this is why you typically get a sore throat with many cold viruses: The throat is the site of infection, and your body's immune system attacks parts of throat itself as collateral damage of taking out the infection).

Once the body finds the antibody which binds to the antigen, it very quickly begins producing them in mass quantities until the virus/bacteria/foreign agent is eliminated (this is why when you get an infection/virus, you "get better" rather quickly compared to the timeframe it takes you to get worse. You'll get sick over the course of 3-4 days, and then it takes only a day for you to get better, once your body finds the appropriate antibodies to attack the virus.

That's not all, though: After an antibody is found to be useful, the body maintains higher concentrations of the antibody in the blood to protect against future infections of the same virus. It remembers what the infection looked like and how it dealt with it and modifies its defense mechanisms to more quickly respond to the same line of attack in the future.

A vaccine is typically a completely harmless mix of dead cells spliced to have the antigens (binding sites/markers) of the actual dangerous agent. Your body learns how to attack the agent structurally, and then remembers it when an actual infection occurs.

If your body takes particularly long in locating the antibody for the harmless vaccine cells, you may experience some symptoms of illness (your body will raise its temperature and attack parts of the body the vaccine was injected at), but that just means your body happened to have a difficult time figuring out what to do.

Yep, but this is a step beyond vaccines: it's directly injecting previously crafted antibodies into the bloodstream, bypassing the phase where the body has to figure out how to tackle the antigen. I'm aware the technique is old (I've heard of the "blood transfusion from survivors" technique), but I imagine there things aren't that simple otherwise it would be a lot more common.

 

[Not]

So we were only actually 2 white people away from a cure?

.

 

[QuicheFontaine]

If the only thing that can go the speed of light is light, just make the spaceships out of light, dammit!

Don't bother man. You'll just get a load of naysayers pooh-poohing your idea because you didn't go to John Hopkins Medical School or something

 

[Raist]

Yep, but this is a step beyond vaccines: it's directly injecting previously crafted antibodies into the bloodstream, bypassing the phase where the body has to figure out how to tackle the antigen. I'm aware the technique is old (I've heard of the "blood transfusion from survivors" technique), but I imagine there things aren't that simple otherwise it would be a lot more common.

It's really not that modern or high tech. It's been used for ages for autoimmune diseases and cancer. It's very similar in priciple to anti-venom treatments, except that these aren't engineered because there's no need to.

It's very uncommon for infectious diseases because it's not a long-term, large scale solution given the ridiculous efficiency of viruses to replicate.
It's not a "killing" method because all it does is neutralizing circulating viral particles. It doesn't get rid of infected cells, whether they're actively producing the virus or not.

That's fine as an approach when you're dealing with toxins, because they don't replicate. But for viruses, this is merely a last resort approach, which still completely relies on the immune system to do the actual job.

 

[Bam Bam Baklava]

Modern science is mind-boggling. The tools they're using now were science fiction, in the earliest stages of development, when I was growing up. Nice job, CDC.

Treatments for cancer are still lagging though.

 

[Alucrid]

I'm basically House.

using antibodies isn't the same as coming "up with a drug that does what our immune system does"

you can go back to being disappointed by modern medicine now

 

[CornBurrito]

Don't bother man. You'll just get a load of naysayers pooh-poohing your idea because you didn't go to John Hopkins Medical School or something

I don't think you realize how complicated medicine actually is.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

It is strange that a company that's likely invested years and tens of millions of dollars, if not hundreds of millions, into developing a treatment couldn't/wouldn't find a single person in the entire outbreak to run a trial with it until two Americans got infected. Not saying that The Onion was actually right, but waiting for infected Americans doesn't make much sense on the company's part.

Legal matters, most likely.

One of few markets that is 'locked' as well, probably. Though aside from the possibility of protectionism, injecting an artificial antibody into humans presents all kinds of legal problems by default.

 

[A Fish Aficionado]

Treatments for cancer are still lagging though.

Not really. And since cancer is multiple illnesses, it really complicated.

 

[Bam Bam Baklava]

Not really. And since cancer is multiple illnesses, it really complicated.

How do you mean? It seems like they are still using the same treatment options as they've been for a long while now and nothing major is on the horizon.

With things like HIV not only does it seem like consistent progress has been made since the 80s, it seems like a breakthrough is near.

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

How do you mean? It seems like they are still using the same treatment options as they've been for a long while now and nothing major is on the horizon.

With things like HIV not only does it seem like consistent progress has been made since the 80s, it seems like a breakthrough is near.

The thing with new treatments is that you have to not only show that it's as good as the current standard of care, but also significantly better, in order to get FDA approval nowadays.

 

[RELAYER]

I don't think you realize how complicated medicine actually is.

But thankfully you're here to inform us.

 

[smokeandmirrors]

But thankfully you're here to inform us.

In case you weren't already aware http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=123967496&postcount=81

 

[A Fish Aficionado]

How do you mean? It seems like they are still using the same treatment options as they've been for a long while now and nothing major is on the horizon.

With things like HIV not only does it seem like consistent progress has been made since the 80s, it seems like a breakthrough is near.

You must not pay a lot of attention to cancer medicine then."Breakthroughs" are actually rare in medicine. Cancer is an umbrella term and what one treatment does for, say leukemia is not the same as breast cancer.


Also, GMO's save the day once again. Thanks science!

 

[Nivash]

How do you mean? It seems like they are still using the same treatment options as they've been for a long while now and nothing major is on the horizon.

With things like HIV not only does it seem like consistent progress has been made since the 80s, it seems like a breakthrough is near.

Sure we're using the same principles as we've done for decades but we're much better at using them, We've also been using antibiotics for bacterial infections for almost a century now so it's not just cancer - it's just that revolution isn't as common as evolution and we make a lot of difference with what we've got in the meantime. .

The problem with cancer is that it isn't a disease, it's a group of diseases that work using similar mechanics. Talking about curing cancer is like talking about curing infections. There's no magic bullet, we can just slowly continue to advance our knowledge and treatments.

Pretty much all cancers have shown increased survival rates over the last decades and, just as importantly, we're generally better at detecting them earlier and preventing them nowadays compared to previously.

Even so there are dramatic improvements with some cancers, one of the best examples being childhood Acute Lymphatic Leukemia where long-term survival has more than quadrupled in the last 40 years, from less than 20 % in 1970 to over 80 % in 2000.

The immunologists who instructed me last fall stated that it was even higher now with close to a 90-95 % five year survival. All through improved chemotherapy regimens.

 

[spootime]

How do you mean? It seems like they are still using the same treatment options as they've been for a long while now and nothing major is on the horizon.

With things like HIV not only does it seem like consistent progress has been made since the 80s, it seems like a breakthrough is near.

Curing HIV cant be compared to curing cancer. A better comparison would be curing viruses. ^^^^ this post explains it rly well nm

 

[v1oz]

This new Ebola treatment was developed with lab animals?


I wonder how many of those diehard freaks opposed to the use of lab animals for science would happily take this new treatment if they got infected it?

I also wonder when we actually start growing replacement human organs on lab animals, will those people refuse to accept those organs if their lives depended on it?

 

[Shao Kahn on the Lawn]

Probably because we need both the country and the individual permission to administer the treatment? What country is going to say yes to letting a foreign country administer untested drugs to its ill?

I would imagine that it's far easier to test this treatment in a controlled, state-of-the-art facility. Extenuating circumstances could make the treatment seem less effective (Or more deadly, depending on your perspective) than it is if you can't ensure what we consider to be the most basic of health baselines here (Access to clean water, steady flow of IVs, disinfected treatment environment, etc.)

When you're testing a drug like this, you want to do it under the best possible circumstances. Even though they were in Liberia, these may have been the best circumstances they could expect.

 

[Raist]

This new Ebola treatment was developed with lab animals?

As are pretty much any treatment, yes.

I wonder how many of those diehard freaks opposed to the use of lab animals for science would happily take this new treatment if they got infected it?

I also wonder when we actually start growing replacement human organs on lab animals, will those people refuse to accept those organs if their lives depended on it?

I just pictured a human liver growing on a mouse.
But more seriously, that won't happen. They'll be grown in plastic dishes instead.

 

[Bam Bam Baklava]

This new Ebola treatment was developed with lab animals?


I wonder how many of those diehard freaks opposed to the use of lab animals for science would happily take this new treatment if they got infected it?

I also wonder when we actually start growing replacement human organs on lab animals, will those people refuse to accept those organs if their lives depended on it?

Has PETA put out a statement about this yet?

 

[Elfforkusu]

That treatment is cool and all, but let's not start sucking each other's dicks just yet gentlemen. Just hope it works.