Spanish flu - (Jun/12/2014 )

pito on Sat Jun 14 23:02:17 2014 said:

However: the disease is not present anymore, so why get it back from the grave? One might ask this question.(..)

 

The same question is, at the moment, valid for the research on the Yersinia pestis bacterium at the moment that was (supposedly) the causative agent for the plague.

I think this type of research is done because they hope to gain valuable insights into the principles of virus or bacterial diseases, so even if a pathogen is no longer relevant today studying it can teach us a lot about how they work and how this type of diseases can be prevented/combatted. So I do think the results of research like this are, at best, highly applicably for today's medicine.

Wouldn't it be difficult to get these studies through ethics committees otherwise ?

Tabaluga on Sun Jun 15 08:13:00 2014 said:

 

pito on Sat Jun 14 23:02:17 2014 said:

However: the disease is not present anymore, so why get it back from the grave? One might ask this question.(..)

 

The same question is, at the moment, valid for the research on the Yersinia pestis bacterium at the moment that was (supposedly) the causative agent for the plague.

 

I think this type of research is done because they hope to gain valuable insights into the principles of virus or bacterial diseases, so even if a pathogen is no longer relevant today studying it can teach us a lot about how they work and how this type of diseases can be prevented/combatted. So I do think the results of research like this are, at best, highly applicably for today's medicine.

Wouldn't it be difficult to get these studies through ethics committees otherwise ?

 

Of course! But the question remains: is it really needed to focus on ancient history while we are facing much bigger dangers?

(one might also argue: will things like this (being extinct) pose a threat or not? (its extinct for a reason often?)

And yes: ethical committees play a great role, the question is however whether those are always involved or not and if they are followed or not (governement funded vs non funded vs industry vs academical... )

We all know that weird things are sometimes happening in industry...

The thing is: one might decipher the mechanism of a virus/bacteria of X year ago , which is great, but is it (would it) be relevant for the future (the "now")? We all know those bugs evolve for a reason and that we are always running behind, trying to catch up....

Yersinia pestis isn't extinct, there are still a number of cases of it every year in many countries around the world.  I think India has quite a number, but it is also reasonably common in the USA amongst people who go out into the back-country where they are exposed to rodents, to give the two extremes.

Y pestis and Smallpox (that is extinct in the wild - still stocks in 2 known labs (CDC and one in Russia) though, and may be more in other places) and quite a few other organisms have the potential to be weaponized - made much more lethal and used in biological warfare, which makes study of them important, as pretty much anyone working in isolation could have a go at weaponizing them without too much difficulty -success at it and dispersal are other matters, but even that isn't too hard with a bit of forethought and some people willing to sacrifice themselves.  So study of these variants of these organisms could be important if we want to know how it behaves in the host and effective treatments.

An anecdote that might inform this debate is:  One of the last known cases of smallpox in Australia (I think - I was told this by an Australian) was diagnosed correctly and put into a hospital bed in an isolation room - this room had a window that was near windows of other wards and this allowed the spread of smallpox to a number of people  who were quite physically removed from the index case.  This incident informed much of the now commonplace thinking about design of isolation rooms and behaviour in and around those rooms - lessons learned that might not have been otherwise so easily.

bob1 on Sun Jun 15 21:03:49 2014 said:

Yersinia pestis isn't extinct, there are still a number of cases of it every year in many countries around the world.  I think India has quite a number, but it is also reasonably common in the USA amongst people who go out into the back-country where they are exposed to rodents, to give the two extremes.

 

Y pestis and Smallpox (that is extinct in the wild - still stocks in 2 known labs (CDC and one in Russia) though, and may be more in other places) and quite a few other organisms have the potential to be weaponized - made much more lethal and used in biological warfare, which makes study of them important, as pretty much anyone working in isolation could have a go at weaponizing them without too much difficulty -success at it and dispersal are other matters, but even that isn't too hard with a bit of forethought and some people willing to sacrifice themselves.  So study of these variants of these organisms could be important if we want to know how it behaves in the host and effective treatments.

 

An anecdote that might inform this debate is:  One of the last known cases of smallpox in Australia (I think - I was told this by an Australian) was diagnosed correctly and put into a hospital bed in an isolation room - this room had a window that was near windows of other wards and this allowed the spread of smallpox to a number of people  who were quite physically removed from the index case.  This incident informed much of the now commonplace thinking about design of isolation rooms and behaviour in and around those rooms - lessons learned that might not have been otherwise so easily.

I know its not extinct...

I was talking about the specific strain that caused the huge problems "back in the days". Its different from the ones we have now as a problem.

The anecdote , I get your point, but its in my opinion not relevant for this particular case.

Also: the smallpox story is different from the flu story...

Its not about studying dangerous organisms its about studying dangerous organisms that are "dead" (not "here" anymore , exceptions granted) and how you study them.

PS.: studying them because they might be used once as a weapon is pretty much useless in many cases because if they are used as a weapon they would have been mutated in such a way that the know/common treatments would not work.  (the knowledge gotten by studying it would aid, but would not be necessary in most cases because you have similar knowledge from other organisms)

+ they would take organisms that are hardly known

(we are talking about people that have pretty much unlimited funds/researchpotential in the case of bio-terrorism).
To battle against such organism one will need to have the organism first to set up the development of the correct anti X therapy.

You also have to keep in mind that there is still no therapy against so many deadly viruses (that are being studied for years) so one might argue that it would be better to put your money in the current problems and not in the "what if this would be a problem in the future" possible problems.

Especially in this case because its pretty much a non problem actually while now it may form a problem.

I am playing a little bit the advocate of the devil here.

To make it even worse in this entire discussion: what about the anti vaccination "hype" in the USA at the moment? In my opinion this is a bigger issue than trying to elucidate the principles of an old extinct virus.

The anti-vaccine thing is a real worry - apparently a quite number of knidergartens and schools won't allow kids who haven't been vaccinated - which might convince a few parents to vaccinate.  Unfortunately it is happening all over the Western world.  I was recently at a conference where Prof Geoffrey Smith (on the world vaccine committe, vaccina virus expert), who said that if he had his way, it would be mandatory - it's been done before for smallpox, and it worked.  He thought that a number of common diseases (measles, rubella, polio (they're working on it) and a few others that i can't remember) could be completely eliminated if such measures were enforced.

Unfortunately the parents of the unvaccinated children have never been around when a lot of these diseases caused large numbers of deaths and serious illness each year, so they don't have any frame of reference.  Personally I'd like to inoculate them with something like measles and see how they like it...

Anyway, back to the debate on re-creation of "dead" diseases -

Yes, I know, though for antibody based therapies would be pretty hard to develop an organism without the respective antigens.

It is also about money - combatting "terrorism" or potential terrorism is an easy way to get money out of politicians...grant writing anyone?

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