NIH RECORD
From New Vantage
Ex-Director Zerhouni Surveys Value of NIH Research
By Rich McManus
On the front page...
Nearly 5 years removed from his NIH directorship, Dr. Elias Zerhouni returned to campus June 4 to offer his views about how to value NIH research economically in an era of flat federal research budgets.
...
“We have moved away from studying human disease in humans,” he lamented. “We all drank the Kool-Aid on that one, me included.” With the ability to knock in or knock out any gene in a mouse—which “can’t sue us,” Zerhouni quipped—researchers have over-relied on animal data. “The problem is that it hasn’t worked, and it’s time we stopped dancing around the problem…We need to refocus and adapt new methodologies for use in humans to understand disease biology in humans.” NIH RECORD Vol. LXV, No. 13. http://nihrecord.od.nih.gov/newsletters/2013/06_21_2013/story1.htm
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
[Animal research] hasn’t worked, and it’s time we stopped dancing around the problem... E. Zerhouni
Sunday, June 16, 2013
"[The Dalai Lama is] the human embodiment of compassion."
There was an article published at the end of May in Madison's Capital Times newspaper titled "How meditation can make the world a better place." The paper summarized the article's main point: "Psychological Science has published a study by UW-Madison graduate student Helen Weng that suggests people can learn how to be more compassionate towards others and themselves." I responded with a piece the editors titled "Madison's love affair with Dalai Lama hasn't benefited its animals."
The article on Weng's research came on the heals of the Dalai Lama's ninth visit to Madison. Here's a little bit of the coverage: "Dalai Lama, in ninth visit to Madison, stresses altruism and compassion."
I understand, to some degree, the frenzied adulation of Elvis, but I am continually amazed by the gullibility and studied ethical blindness of the non-native Tibetan followers of His Holiness. I love that title; it always makes me chuckle.
My article rankled Zorba Paster, a local medical doctor and well known local celebrity. Wikipedia says:
Paster came to the defense of His Holiness: "Dalai Lama human embodiment of compassion."
Dr. Paster characterizes himself as an amateur Buddhist who has been friends with the Dalai Lama since 1976. Amateur Buddhist? Is that like an amateur Baptist? Does he mean that he's not a professional Buddhist? It's not clear what he means, but it is clear that he is a Buddhist who is intimately associated with the local Tibetan Buddhist center and monastery Deer Park.
In my editorial, I pointed to the plain fact that UW-Madison researcher Richard Davidson promotes meditation as a way to increase compassion, is a personal friend of the Dalai Lama's and is involved in invasive brain research into the neurobiology of fear using young monkeys. I also pointed out that His Holiness eats animals and supports animal experimentation. Paster claims that the Dalai Lama's support for hurting and killing those weaker than ourselves, and Davidson's active role in such work, are examples of compassion. How is it that someone smart enough to get through medical school and finagle a national radio show can be so seemingly blind?
There is a practice in Tibetan Buddhism called Guru Yoga. One source describes it this way:
His Holiness has his name on a book titled: The Union Of Bliss And Emptiness: Teachings On The Practice Of Guru Yoga. I don't think it likely that any long-time practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism isn't also a practitioner of guru yoga, a fundamental practice in Tibetan Buddhism. And Paster's claim of being an amateur Buddhist is at odds with his long intimate involvement with Lama Lhundub Sopa, or Geshe Sopa, the head of Deer Park. I suspect that Paster and his wife have spent many years trying to merge their minds with his; and I suspect that any Tibetan Buddhist from a sect that has not been banned by His Holiness imagines or tries to achieve some sort of mind meld with the Dalai Lama's wisdom mind as they visualize him as a deity. It makes perfect sense that someone would react with vigor when the perfection of their deity is questioned. Less understandable is the time it can take us to realize that our idols have feet of clay. Unfortunately, the phenomena is very common and frequently leads to muddied thinking and obedience to those with much less than good intent.
Dr. Paster makes some false and odd claims outside his weak defense of His Holiness's and Davidson's embrace of cruelty in his editorial that I'll address here.
-- "The University of Wisconsin has been actively involved in primate experiments since Harry Harlow opened the Primate Center back in the '60s. The reason that many are disturbed by primate research is that we are so close to monkeys on the evolutionary chain. They look just like us. Yet that research has been invaluable in improving maternal and child care and investigating the root sources of anxiety."
This is the recitation of mythology. See my essays:
Harry Harlow's Dark Shadow
Children Need Love and Hugs: A Brief History of Maternal Deprivation
And, Harry Harlow and Stephen Suomi, a chapter from my book, Monsters.
-- "Primate trials were critical to Drs. Salk and Sabin’s developing the polio vaccine, which saves millions of lives every year. Is this bad stuff? Most people would agree with me that ethically done, primate research engineered to help mankind is important to do. The key word here is ethical."
First, the "millions" of lives being saved each year is pure hyperbole. In 1952, at the peak of the polio epidemic in the U.S., 3,145 died from complications related to the disease. This is a lot of people, but polio doesn’t even make the 1952 (or any other year’s) top ten list of the leading causes of death. Polio was hyped only because President Roosevelt had the disease.
Until polio could be grown in vitro, reservoirs of the virus were maintained through serial inoculations of rhesus macaques with tissue containing the virus. If one looked only at that fact, it could appear that the monkeys were a key element in the effort to develop a vaccine. But the whole story suggests something else.
Monkeys harboring the virus were killed and their brains harvested. This is the tissue that was used to inoculate the next batch of monkeys in order to keep a supply of the virus on hand. The virus-laden tissue was injected into their nasal passage and the virus quickly migrated into their brain. But the repeated reinoculations with brain tissue led to the development of a strain of polio much different from that circulating in the human population.
Additionally, because the results were so unambiguous, that is, injecting polio infected tissues into the nasal passages did indeed cause polio, it was falsely believed for a generation that polio was air-borne, when in fact, in natural settings it is ingested orally and lodges first in the gastrointestinal tract.
This was recognized early on by scientists studying humans, but the animal data was so compelling that a generation was lost as scientists based their studies on a different strain transmitted in a different way. The breakthrough came when scientists stopped culturing the virus in monkeys. Nobelprize.org says:
-- "Bogle suggests that eating animals is inherently bad. But in fact, even the most strict vegetarian cannot avoid eating animals, i.e., insects. The proof comes from vitamin B12 studies. There is absolutely no source of vitamin B12 in the plant kingdom; it comes from animals. Research of South Indian lifetime vegetarians shows that their B12 comes from insect parts found in grains, flour, legumes and beans. Even a vegan isn’t be immune from animal destruction."
In my experience, "experts" believe the things they "know" to be true and rarely stop to question them. Vitamin B12 does not come from animals. See Microbial production of vitamin B12. Martens JH, Barg H, Warren MJ, Jahn D. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol. 2002. Some animal tissues contain B12, but this is because they eat foods that are contaminated with the micro-organisms that produce B12. No one needs to eat animals to get a sufficient quantity of B12.
Paster seems to me to be claiming that because no one can live in a way that doesn't ever cause others harm that we ought not be upset when someone harms others willfully. Because a purported vegetarian in southern India may get get a trace of vitamin B12 from a dead bug in the grains they eat, it's OK to eat animals generally. Wow. Just wow. What ever happened to Harm no sentient being?
-- "Now on to Bogle’s most outrageous implication — that Tibetan Lamas subjugated the Tibetan people for 800 years. I wonder if Bogle has ever been to Tibet, as I have numerous times. If he had, he would have seen how Tibetans are subjugated by their Chinese overlords, who claim that they “liberated” them. This is classic communist propaganda. Tibetans are quickly becoming a minority in their own country. You need only see the human immolations that are going on in Tibet to see how desperate Tibetans are."
I've never been to Tibet. Paster's trips to the holy land seem not to have resulted in much knowledge of the region's sociopolitical history. Tibet's history, as far as human rights are concerned, is not much different than the history of every other feudal state's. There has been a slow improvement over time. Thubten Gyatso was two years old in 1878, when he was recognized as the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and became the 13th Dalai Lama of Tibet, the current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso's immediate predecessor. Thubten Gyatso died in 1933. In 1937, he was reborn and became the current Dalai Lama. Anyway, it appears that there is some doubt or lack of clarity, but it was probably Thubten Gyatso the 13th Dalai Lama who more or less ended the caste-based slavery that apparently was common at the time. Some writers who visited the country just prior to the 1950 invasion by China, report seeing people with missing appendages as a result of being punished by the government. This doesn't sound very unlike some parts of the Middle East.
Tibet in 1950 wasn't any more progressive than any of its neighbors. Were average people being subjugated by the Lamas? Of course they were. There isn't democracy in the belief that those in charge are in charge because they are reincarnated rulers.
Self-immolation is a relatively common practice in Buddhism. In fact, if you look up self-immolation on Wikipedia, it is an essay on Buddhism. In other words, if the Chinese had invaded and subjugated someone other than Buddhists, no one would be setting themselves on fire.
I think Zorba Paster ought to have said up front that he is actually a long-time Tibetan Buddhist and a personal friend of Richard Davidson. He ought to have checked his facts before offering advice on people's nutritional needs and on the development of the polio vaccine. He paints a misleading picture of the self-immolations and ignores the reality of Tibetan history.
I don't care about Tibetan Buddhism any more than I care about any other religion. What drives me up the wall is media's absurd reporting on the great compassion of the leader of the church and UW-Madison and its vivisectors using the Dalai Lama's endorsement of vivisection to claim that hurting those weaker than themselves is compassionate.
The article on Weng's research came on the heals of the Dalai Lama's ninth visit to Madison. Here's a little bit of the coverage: "Dalai Lama, in ninth visit to Madison, stresses altruism and compassion."
I understand, to some degree, the frenzied adulation of Elvis, but I am continually amazed by the gullibility and studied ethical blindness of the non-native Tibetan followers of His Holiness. I love that title; it always makes me chuckle.
My article rankled Zorba Paster, a local medical doctor and well known local celebrity. Wikipedia says:
Robert Zorba Paster, MD is a physician and radio show host. Paster was born and raised in Chicago. He hosts a weekly radio call-in show on personal health issues called Zorba Paster on Your Health. The show is produced by Wisconsin Public Radio, sponsored by Public Radio International, and is broadcast on public radio stations around the United States. The show's trademark is a lighthearted, humorous approach, made possible by Zorba's banter with his co-host, Tom Clark. The show's style is somewhat similar to National Public Radio's program, Car Talk, providing callers both with good advice and kind-hearted ribbing.
Paster came to the defense of His Holiness: "Dalai Lama human embodiment of compassion."
Dr. Paster characterizes himself as an amateur Buddhist who has been friends with the Dalai Lama since 1976. Amateur Buddhist? Is that like an amateur Baptist? Does he mean that he's not a professional Buddhist? It's not clear what he means, but it is clear that he is a Buddhist who is intimately associated with the local Tibetan Buddhist center and monastery Deer Park.
In my editorial, I pointed to the plain fact that UW-Madison researcher Richard Davidson promotes meditation as a way to increase compassion, is a personal friend of the Dalai Lama's and is involved in invasive brain research into the neurobiology of fear using young monkeys. I also pointed out that His Holiness eats animals and supports animal experimentation. Paster claims that the Dalai Lama's support for hurting and killing those weaker than ourselves, and Davidson's active role in such work, are examples of compassion. How is it that someone smart enough to get through medical school and finagle a national radio show can be so seemingly blind?
There is a practice in Tibetan Buddhism called Guru Yoga. One source describes it this way:
Guru Yoga — the practice of merging one’s mind with the wisdom mind of the master. The practice consists of visualizing the guru (either in his own form or in the form of deity), requesting his blessings, receiving his blessings, and merging one's mind with the master's wisdom mind.
His Holiness has his name on a book titled: The Union Of Bliss And Emptiness: Teachings On The Practice Of Guru Yoga. I don't think it likely that any long-time practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism isn't also a practitioner of guru yoga, a fundamental practice in Tibetan Buddhism. And Paster's claim of being an amateur Buddhist is at odds with his long intimate involvement with Lama Lhundub Sopa, or Geshe Sopa, the head of Deer Park. I suspect that Paster and his wife have spent many years trying to merge their minds with his; and I suspect that any Tibetan Buddhist from a sect that has not been banned by His Holiness imagines or tries to achieve some sort of mind meld with the Dalai Lama's wisdom mind as they visualize him as a deity. It makes perfect sense that someone would react with vigor when the perfection of their deity is questioned. Less understandable is the time it can take us to realize that our idols have feet of clay. Unfortunately, the phenomena is very common and frequently leads to muddied thinking and obedience to those with much less than good intent.
Dr. Paster makes some false and odd claims outside his weak defense of His Holiness's and Davidson's embrace of cruelty in his editorial that I'll address here.
-- "The University of Wisconsin has been actively involved in primate experiments since Harry Harlow opened the Primate Center back in the '60s. The reason that many are disturbed by primate research is that we are so close to monkeys on the evolutionary chain. They look just like us. Yet that research has been invaluable in improving maternal and child care and investigating the root sources of anxiety."
This is the recitation of mythology. See my essays:
Harry Harlow's Dark Shadow
Children Need Love and Hugs: A Brief History of Maternal Deprivation
And, Harry Harlow and Stephen Suomi, a chapter from my book, Monsters.
-- "Primate trials were critical to Drs. Salk and Sabin’s developing the polio vaccine, which saves millions of lives every year. Is this bad stuff? Most people would agree with me that ethically done, primate research engineered to help mankind is important to do. The key word here is ethical."
First, the "millions" of lives being saved each year is pure hyperbole. In 1952, at the peak of the polio epidemic in the U.S., 3,145 died from complications related to the disease. This is a lot of people, but polio doesn’t even make the 1952 (or any other year’s) top ten list of the leading causes of death. Polio was hyped only because President Roosevelt had the disease.
Until polio could be grown in vitro, reservoirs of the virus were maintained through serial inoculations of rhesus macaques with tissue containing the virus. If one looked only at that fact, it could appear that the monkeys were a key element in the effort to develop a vaccine. But the whole story suggests something else.
Monkeys harboring the virus were killed and their brains harvested. This is the tissue that was used to inoculate the next batch of monkeys in order to keep a supply of the virus on hand. The virus-laden tissue was injected into their nasal passage and the virus quickly migrated into their brain. But the repeated reinoculations with brain tissue led to the development of a strain of polio much different from that circulating in the human population.
Additionally, because the results were so unambiguous, that is, injecting polio infected tissues into the nasal passages did indeed cause polio, it was falsely believed for a generation that polio was air-borne, when in fact, in natural settings it is ingested orally and lodges first in the gastrointestinal tract.
This was recognized early on by scientists studying humans, but the animal data was so compelling that a generation was lost as scientists based their studies on a different strain transmitted in a different way. The breakthrough came when scientists stopped culturing the virus in monkeys. Nobelprize.org says:
The 1954 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to John Franklin Enders and his junior associates Thomas Huckle Weller and Frederick Chapman Robbins "for their discovery of the ability of poliomyelitis viruses to grow in cultures of various types of tissue." For forty years, dependence on a monkey host for propagation of the polio virus limited progress in basic studies until 1949 when Enders, Weller and Robbins showed how cultures of kidney and other human and monkey cells could produce large quantities of the virus. This breakthrough opened the way to studies that set standards for precision in investigations of other viruses and led directly to the engineering of the Salk and Sabin vaccines that eliminated the dreaded specter of a disabling and often lethal disease.It remains to be seen whether or not the use of monkeys was either critical or ethical.
-- "Bogle suggests that eating animals is inherently bad. But in fact, even the most strict vegetarian cannot avoid eating animals, i.e., insects. The proof comes from vitamin B12 studies. There is absolutely no source of vitamin B12 in the plant kingdom; it comes from animals. Research of South Indian lifetime vegetarians shows that their B12 comes from insect parts found in grains, flour, legumes and beans. Even a vegan isn’t be immune from animal destruction."
In my experience, "experts" believe the things they "know" to be true and rarely stop to question them. Vitamin B12 does not come from animals. See Microbial production of vitamin B12. Martens JH, Barg H, Warren MJ, Jahn D. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol. 2002. Some animal tissues contain B12, but this is because they eat foods that are contaminated with the micro-organisms that produce B12. No one needs to eat animals to get a sufficient quantity of B12.
Paster seems to me to be claiming that because no one can live in a way that doesn't ever cause others harm that we ought not be upset when someone harms others willfully. Because a purported vegetarian in southern India may get get a trace of vitamin B12 from a dead bug in the grains they eat, it's OK to eat animals generally. Wow. Just wow. What ever happened to Harm no sentient being?
-- "Now on to Bogle’s most outrageous implication — that Tibetan Lamas subjugated the Tibetan people for 800 years. I wonder if Bogle has ever been to Tibet, as I have numerous times. If he had, he would have seen how Tibetans are subjugated by their Chinese overlords, who claim that they “liberated” them. This is classic communist propaganda. Tibetans are quickly becoming a minority in their own country. You need only see the human immolations that are going on in Tibet to see how desperate Tibetans are."
I've never been to Tibet. Paster's trips to the holy land seem not to have resulted in much knowledge of the region's sociopolitical history. Tibet's history, as far as human rights are concerned, is not much different than the history of every other feudal state's. There has been a slow improvement over time. Thubten Gyatso was two years old in 1878, when he was recognized as the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and became the 13th Dalai Lama of Tibet, the current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso's immediate predecessor. Thubten Gyatso died in 1933. In 1937, he was reborn and became the current Dalai Lama. Anyway, it appears that there is some doubt or lack of clarity, but it was probably Thubten Gyatso the 13th Dalai Lama who more or less ended the caste-based slavery that apparently was common at the time. Some writers who visited the country just prior to the 1950 invasion by China, report seeing people with missing appendages as a result of being punished by the government. This doesn't sound very unlike some parts of the Middle East.
Tibet in 1950 wasn't any more progressive than any of its neighbors. Were average people being subjugated by the Lamas? Of course they were. There isn't democracy in the belief that those in charge are in charge because they are reincarnated rulers.
Self-immolation is a relatively common practice in Buddhism. In fact, if you look up self-immolation on Wikipedia, it is an essay on Buddhism. In other words, if the Chinese had invaded and subjugated someone other than Buddhists, no one would be setting themselves on fire.
I think Zorba Paster ought to have said up front that he is actually a long-time Tibetan Buddhist and a personal friend of Richard Davidson. He ought to have checked his facts before offering advice on people's nutritional needs and on the development of the polio vaccine. He paints a misleading picture of the self-immolations and ignores the reality of Tibetan history.
I don't care about Tibetan Buddhism any more than I care about any other religion. What drives me up the wall is media's absurd reporting on the great compassion of the leader of the church and UW-Madison and its vivisectors using the Dalai Lama's endorsement of vivisection to claim that hurting those weaker than themselves is compassionate.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
UW-Madison wants exemption from state open records law
First, they slipped in an exemption from the state's anticruelty laws for themselves; now they want to keep their cruelty even more secretive. Evil is as evil does.
UW-Madison wants to protect research by limiting open records lawAnd here’s UW’s memo: http://media.jsonline.com/documents/Open+Records+Research+Exemption+Language.pdf
By Jason Stein and Karen Herzog of the Journal Sentinel
May 23, 2013 1:44 p.m.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is seeking to limit the state's open records law — potentially through language slipped into the state budget — to keep from the public information about research until it is published or patented.
No specific incidents of harmful disclosures were cited in language for a possible motion that is being passed among Republican lawmakers and was obtained by the Journal Sentinel.
University officials have been seeking to convince GOP lawmakers to advance the legislation either as a separate bill or by inserting it into the state budget when the UW System's part of the bill comes before the Legislature's budget committee Thursday.
In an interview Thursday, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) made clear he was at least open to the idea, though he didn't know all the details on it. He didn't say if the provision would be included in a larger and still unreleased motion on the UW System that is expected to be voted on by Joint Finance Committee members later in the day as it considers funding for public universities and colleges in the 2013-'15 state budget.
Vos said he saw a need to make changes to the open records law to ensure a researcher's work wouldn't have to be released publicly before the researcher was ready to publish it.
"In general, if it's a public institution things should be public, but I don't want to hurt (research)," Vos said.
more...
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
The Discovery Institute gets one right
I don't think I've ever agreed with anything I've read from Wesley J. Smith a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute who is a regular critic of protecting animals. The organization is very pro-status-quo when it comes to exploiting animals. Animals don't have souls, so piss on them, they seem to be saying. I guess they think that's what God wants. Whatever. Our apparent shared close observation of modern experimental biology has though resulted in a rare convergence of opinion on at least this point: Self Regulation of Science Doesn't Work.
Vivisectors ask you to ignore the obvious.
Opinion: Ethics Training in Science: The NIH has required researchers to receive instruction about responsible conduct for more than 20 years, but misconduct is still on the rise. James Hicks. May 14, 2013. The Scientist. .... Today, 1 in 3 scientists responding anonymously to surveys admits to “questionable” research practices; research misconduct cases handled by the US Office of Research Integrity (ORI) are at an all-time high; and retractions of scientific papers have increased exponentially since 2005. It should be noted that not all retracted papers involve foul play, but a recent study reported in PNAS surveying 2,047 biomedical and life-science papers revealed that 67 percent of retractions were directly attributable to misconduct.It strains credibility to imagine that an industry based on harming animals and filled with those who admit to unethical behavior treat their research subjects with compassion or respect.
Monday, May 6, 2013
Animal Testing Thrown into Doubt, Again: Idiocy Confirmed
I don't know how many times I've seen someone post the dismal statistic regarding the very low success rate of new pharmaceuticals in an on-line discussion about the use of animals. Invariably, some numbskull will write back that the crazy vegan animal rights nuts who point out this little problem simply don't understand science and the drug development process. The assertion frequently comes with a puffed-up chest and the anonymous assertion that of course scientists, like them, know more than the nut.
Well..., as many of us nuts have known for some time, financial and other factors tend to turn those with vested interests into total idiots. The research finding discussed below will be vigorously argued against and disparaged, and given the gigantic financial benefits of producing animals and experimenting on them, in spite of the absence of significant benefit, things probably won't change any time soon.
Nevertheless, I simply can't wait to hear the idiots yelling that the many authors of this paper simply don't understand science and the drug development process.
Well..., as many of us nuts have known for some time, financial and other factors tend to turn those with vested interests into total idiots. The research finding discussed below will be vigorously argued against and disparaged, and given the gigantic financial benefits of producing animals and experimenting on them, in spite of the absence of significant benefit, things probably won't change any time soon.
Nevertheless, I simply can't wait to hear the idiots yelling that the many authors of this paper simply don't understand science and the drug development process.
The Experiment Is on Us: Science of Animal Testing Thrown into DoubtMore...
May 6, 2013 Environment, Health, News
by Pat Dutt and Jonathan Latham, PhD
New scientific research has cast grave doubt on the safety testing of hundreds of thousands of consumer products, food additives and industrial chemicals.
Everyday products, from soft drinks and baby foods, to paints, gardening products, cosmetics and shampoos, contain numerous synthetic chemicals as preservatives, dyes, active ingredients, or as contaminants. Official assurances of the safety of these chemicals are based largely on animal experiments that use rabbits, mice, rats and dogs. But new results from a consortium of researchers and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggest such assurances may be worthless (Seok et al. 2013).
The results of these experiments challenge the longstanding scientific presumption holding that animal experiments are of direct relevance to humans. For that reason they potentially invalidate the entire body of safety information that has been built up to distinguish safe chemicals from unsafe ones. The new results arise from basic medical research, which itself rests heavily on the idea that treatments can be developed in animals and transferred to humans.
The research originated when investigators noted that in their medical specialism of inflammatory disease (which includes diabetes, asthma and arthritis), drugs developed using mice have to date had a 100% failure rate in almost 150 clinical trials on humans.
According to Kristie Sullivan, Director of Regulatory Testing Issues at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), this is not unusual “about 90% of all pharmaceuticals tested for safety in animals fail to reach the market, or are quickly pulled from the market”. Wanting to understand why this might be so, the consortium decided to test the effects of various treatments that lead to inflammation, and systematically compare results between mice and humans. This postulated correlation across different animal species is sometimes known as the concordance assumption.
“appalling irresponsibility”
Just like UW-Madison...
New strain of killer flu created in a labmore...
May 6 2013
By STEVE CONNOR
London - Senior scientists have criticised the “appalling irresponsibility” of researchers in China who have deliberately created new strains of influenza virus in a veterinary laboratory.
They warned there is a danger that the new viral strains created by mixing bird-flu virus with human influenza could escape from the laboratory to cause a global pandemic, killing millions of people.
Lord May of Oxford, a former government chief scientist and past president of the Royal Society, denounced the study published in the journal Science as doing nothing to further the understanding and prevention of flu pandemics. “They claim they are doing this to help develop vaccines and such like. In fact the real reason is that they are driven by blind ambition with no common sense whatsoever,” Lord May told The Independent.
“The record of containment in labs like this is not reassuring. They are taking it upon themselves to create human-to-human transmission of very dangerous viruses. It's appallingly irresponsible,” he said.
Friday, May 3, 2013
"Very dangerous work disguised as big science."
Study: Lab-made H5N1-H1N1 viruses spread in guinea pigs
Robert Roos - News Editor May 2, 2013
(CIDRAP News) – Chinese scientists report that lab-generated hybrid viruses combining genes from avian H5N1 and pandemic 2009 H1N1 (pH1N1) influenza viruses can achieve airborne spread between guinea pigs, a finding that seems likely to renew the debate about the risks of creating novel viruses that might be able to spark a human pandemic.
Writing in Science, the researchers say that 5 of 127 hybrids they generated by shuffling genes from the two subtypes showed "highly efficient" transmission in guinea pigs. None of the guinea pigs died, but some mice that were infected with the reassortant strains did succumb.
Guinea pigs are not regarded as the best experimental model for human flu, a distinction that belongs to ferrets. The Chinese team did not test any of the hybrid viruses in ferrets, because a voluntary moratorium on "gain of function" research on H5N1 viruses—studies involving the creation of potentially dangerous new strains—intervened in January 2012 and lasted a year.
The moratorium was prompted by the controversy that erupted in late 2011 over two earlier studies in which researchers generated novel H5N1 strains that spread among ferrets via respiratory droplets. One of the studies involved an H5N1-H1N1 reassortant; while the other involved an H5N1 virus in which specific mutations were induced. The US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) sought to prevent publication of full details of the two studies, but eventually reversed itself, and the studies were published in May and June of 2012.
continues....
Friday, April 26, 2013
SIV isn't HIV
SIV, the so-called simian immunodeficiency virus isn't the same virus as HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, and rhesus macaques aren't human beings.
These two confounding facts were again responsible for yet another HIV vaccine clinical trial being shut down.
These two confounding facts were again responsible for yet another HIV vaccine clinical trial being shut down.
Federal researchers have faced a major setback in the pursuit of an HIV vaccine, shutting down a clinical trial on Thursday after determining that volunteers who received the vaccination shot were more likely to contract the virus than those who were given a placebo. The vaccine also failed to reduce virus levels in the blood of volunteers who contracted HIV, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). .......
The study began in 2009, and researchers had immunized half of the 2,504 volunteers with a DNA-based vaccine called HVTN 505 that was intended to “prime the immune system to attack the AIDS virus. Then a different vaccine, encasing the same material inside a shell made of a disabled cold virus, acts as a booster shot to strengthen that response. Neither vaccine could cause HIV,” according to the Associated Press.
Results from a series of nonhuman primate studies influenced the decision to expand the HVTN 505 trial, says Dieffenbach. Animal data showed that about half of rhesus macaques given a simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) vaccine regimen similar to the HIV vaccine regimen used in the HVTN 505 trial were protected against SIV following SIVsmE660 challenge, and that a low level of neutralizing antibodies to Env, and an Env-specific CD4+ T-cell response correlated with this protective effect.....
Dieffenbach says the large number of animals (129 macaques) used in the study, and the fact that the protection occurred in the presence of robust cellular responses and low levels of SIV-neutralizing antibodies, suggested that the HVTN 505 regimen could have the capacity to prevent HIV acquisition in people. “You are only as good as the data you have in front of you,” says Dieffenbach, reflecting on the expansion of the HVTN 505 trial. “We [haven’t had] many efficacy trials and if we have the opportunity and there is plausibility, we need as a field to take a chance.”
The study, led by Louis Picker, a professor of pathology at the Oregon Health & Science University [Oregon National Primate Research Center], showed that 12 of 24 Indian rhesus macaques vaccinated with a replication-competent rhesus cytomegalovirus (rhCMV) viral vector vaccine candidate encoding the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)mac239 proteins Env, Pol, Gag, and Vpr/Vpx demonstrated early and complete control of viral replication for more than a year after repeat, homologous, low dose SIVmac239 challenge....No surprises here.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Davidson and his guru back in the news
Read this: http://www.madisonmagazine.com/Madison-Magazine/May-2013/The-World-Wide-Web/
Now read this by the same author: http://www.madisonmagazine.com/Madison-Magazine/June-2008/Its-a-Jungle-in-Here/#.UXH_KJ2ZGmg.facebook
This is the video linked in the above article.
Now read this by the same author: http://www.madisonmagazine.com/Madison-Magazine/June-2008/Its-a-Jungle-in-Here/#.UXH_KJ2ZGmg.facebook
This is the video linked in the above article.
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