Weaponizing Ebola/Marburg

[bascule]

300 are dead from Marburg in Angola. And now 8 are dead in Congo from Ebola. With terrorists itching to acquire weapons of mass destruction, why aren't they racing to Angola or the Congo to collect samples of the virus for weaponization?

[Macroscopic]

How do we know they're not?

[calbiterol]

Terrorists? I'd be just as worried about other governments.

 

Plus, how do you know this isn't a slip-up of a weaponized version being tested, or something like that? Or it's some technological superpower rearing its big ugly head and testing chemical weapons, or it's Kylonicus. Who knows?

[bascule]

Well, regardless, be afraid, be very afraid...

[RedAlert]

Don't we already have a vaccine for them?

[Nevermore]

no.

[husmusen]

I don't recall where I heard this so consider it apocryphal.

 

I do however recall that a team of three people associated with militant

groups in Japan or ME tried to collect some ebola from a live victim, sadly

for them and fortunately for us, they died on the journey back, I'll

give you one guess what of.

 

Ebola is a nurses nightmare because in order to be safe, you practically

have to wear a spacesuit.

 

As far as I know the U.S. and Russia and probably the PRC have

quite advanced ebola proghrams, and have upped it's lethality beyond

that of the natural version(quite a feat).

 

I also heard from my cousin, whose into all this stuff, that there is

a smallpox-ebola hybrid that was produced by the US and Russia

(independantly) that is worse.

 

Having said that, I don't think terrorists are a huge worry.

 

1)Thinks like the ebolapox hybrid are kept under fairly good lock and

key.

2)The Antrax letter and the efforts of the Um supreme fruitcakes, seem

to indicate that in practice bioweapons are harder to deliver than the

general populace thinks.

 

Cheers.

[Ophiolite]

As far as I know the U.S. and Russia and probably the PRC have quite advanced ebola proghrams' date=' and have upped it's lethality beyond

that of the natural version(quite a feat).

[/quote']If that increase is also reflected in a shorter incubation period and time-to-death it would be less problematic, since carriers would infect fewer people before dying, or becoming obviously ill.

[Dak]

viral haemmorrhajic fevers like ebola are grim, and would wipe out huge numbers of the population at once (i think ebola has near a 95% mortality if untreated). BUT the use of a microbe as a terrorist weapon depends on more than its lethality. as husmusen said, its a tad hard to work with (and transport).

 

The Antrax letter and the efforts of the Um supreme fruitcakes' date=' seem

to indicate that in practice bioweapons are harder to deliver than the

general populace thinks.

[/quote']anthrax isnt actually a very good terror weapon. i mean, bascillus anthrisus spores as dispursed by a mortar are quite grim, but no worse than some kind of chemical poison. its extremely easy to prevent anthrax spreading from one person to another, as its natural route of transmission is to be excreted along with faecies, whereupon it sporifies and waits for an animal to eat the grass where it fell -- it cannot be cought just by standing next to someone who is infected with bascillus anthrisis.

[Ophiolite]

(i think ebola has near a 95% mortality if untreated)

Whereas with treatment the survival rate is 5%.

[RedAlert]

Whereas with treatment the survival rate is 5%.

 

Huh?!

 

You mean there is no treatment...and there is no vaccine!!

 

HOLY SHIT! And this thing is spreading in Africa?

[calbiterol]

Yep. Pretty much. As far as I'm aware, there is no way to treat it (except morphene, and that has nothing to do with the disease... Comfort is what it's about at that point), and there isn't a cure. (If there is, where have I been?? but I'm 99.9999999% sure there isn't one) It's possible that the governments engineering these apocalyptic WMD's have some sort of prevention from infection for that government's own citizents, but one never knows.

[husmusen]

Opheiolite:

If that increase is also reflected in a shorter incubation period and time-to-death it would be less problematic, since carriers would infect fewer people before dying, or becoming obviously ill.

 

Be nice wouldn't it, my understanding however was that

it was the infectiousness of smallpox, with lethality of

ebola++. Very nasty. Stupid weapon to invent as once released

it would be, almost, if not completely impossible to contain,

and it has no IFF.

 

The probability of mutation to defeat any vaccine is very high

once it's infected say, 3 billion people.

 

Dak:

anthrax isnt actually a very good terror weapon.

i mean, bascillus anthrisus spores as dispursed by a

mortar are quite grim, but no worse than some kind of

chemical poison.

 

Agreed, I used them as they are ones that have actually

been field deployed, (even if it was rumored to be by an American

scientist against his own people in order to get more funding.)

The Aum supreme nutters, also tried blowing anthrax of a

tokyo skyscraper and to the best of my knowledge noone died

because they screwed up the milling(Phew).

Versus their first attempt with chemical weapons(Subway gas attack).

 

Also there are vaccines against anthrax and and a dual

Anti-biotic regime that is quite effective at infection prevention,

but not so good if it gets a hold.

 

Soldiers who had both a current vaccine, and were taking their AB's

would be fairly hard targets for an anthrax bomb.

They'd still die from primary exposure, secondary spore residue

would be pretty harmless to them though.

 

SARS is the current frenzy, but that can be defeated by handwashing,

which is how I understand it was eventually stopped.

 

Ophiolite:

Whereas with treatment the survival rate is 5%.

 

LOL.

 

Calbiterol:

It's possible that the governments engineering these apocalyptic

WMD's have some sort of prevention from infection for that

government's own citizents, but one never knows.

 

Yeah, I'm sure they keep it right next to the device that

protects their citizens from nuclear weapons and radiation.

 

You give them too much credit I fear.

To protect a populace would require a huge drug/vaccine stockpile,

these stockpiles are not like tinned food, they have use by dates,

they need production facilities, they cost money, storage space,

a distribution means/network that would work when half the country

is sick and dying, and every 1 to 20 years the drug would need to

be remanufactured in quantaties sufficient to protect the populace.

For the U.S. with pop 300M that would be between 20M and 80M

units depending on how much risk they want to take.

And you would need a drug for each bioweapon.

 

In short, no they don't, they may have 20K units for protection

of elite soldiers (and generals and congressmen) and that's

assuming there exists a cure which is a big if.

 

Cheers, sort of

[calbiterol]

Yeah' date=' I'm sure they keep it right next to the device that

protects their citizens from nuclear weapons and radiation.

 

You give them too much credit I fear.

To protect a populace would require a huge drug/vaccine stockpile,

these stockpiles are not like tinned food, they have use by dates,

they need production facilities, they cost money, storage space,

a distribution means/network that would work when half the country

is sick and dying, and every 1 to 20 years the drug would need to

be remanufactured in quantaties sufficient to protect the populace.

For the U.S. with pop 300M that would be between 20M and 80M

units depending on how much risk they want to take.

And you would need a drug for each bioweapon.

 

In short, no they don't, they may have 20K units for protection

of elite soldiers (and generals and congressmen) and that's

assuming there exists a cure which is a big if.

 

Cheers, sort of [/quote']

 

I agree. Hence the words "it's possible." Look at the mass shortage of flu shots; something like a weaponized ebola vaccine would mean mass panic and probably mass murder. Not to sound conspiratory-theorist, but if there was a vaccine, or a cure, or whatever, they'd have it for the super-high-echelon government people only. The average citizen would be screwed. Or a Dr. Strangelove-esque repopulation scheme would develop: a 1:5 ratio of men to women, and in a few hundred years, the world is repopulated. As for protection against nuclear devices, they do have supposed nuke-proof bunkers for high-ranking people in the US that can withstand anything but a direct hit by an ICBM carrying a top-of-the-line nuke. Or so I've heard.

[Dave]

I don't understand why you're all so worried about this; Ebola outbreaks are (fairly) common in Africa. There's a couple of reasons that it stays there and doesn't come here:

 

1) Africa is big - really, really big. The population density is such that if one village were to get infected, then the outbreak would stop there.

2) Ebola is very fragile, and can't survive in the outside for more than about 1-2 minutes at most.

3) Even if it were to get to somewhere like the US, appropriate quarantine/preventative measures would be quite effective in stopping the disease from spreading.

 

The trouble is, Ebola is a very, very efficient virus when it comes to killing a patient and as such, the epidemic would tend to burn out rapidly. You'd see a high outbreak at first, and then the death tolls would reduce rather rapidly. You can model this using something like the SEIR equations.

 

It's much more effective (and, I daresay, easier) for a load of terrorists to detonate a nuclear warhead than pull off a feat like releasing a strain of Ebola into the country. If you want a non-sciency kind of view on this, then I suggest you read Tom Clancy's book, "Executive Decision". It's rather a good read, and the science behind it seems to be valid enough.

[husmusen]

Dave:

1) Africa is big - really, really big. The population density is such that if one village were to get infected, then the outbreak would stop there.

 

Err, I'm pretty sure there have been multi villiage outbreaks, and

Africa is getting more urbanised because that's where the jobs are.

Ebola will still be here 20 years from now.

 

Dave:

2) Ebola is very fragile, and can't survive in the outside for more than about 1-2 minutes at most.

 

In the open sun sure, but it's also really good at infecting people.

People with ebola bleed everywhere, this blood teams with live infectious

virus, they cough, also teeming with virus, I'm no sure about the 1-2 mins,

but even given that that's plenty if you happen to be around.

 

They also have liquid bowels, mixed with blood, again all loaded.

And even a small exposure is infectious, they are a nursing nightmare.

 

Also it's possible to put it into a more harmonious enviroment, which is

how bio-weapons experts harvested it.

 

Dave:

3) Even if it were to get to somewhere like the US, appropriate quarantine/preventative measures would be quite effective in stopping the disease from spreading.

 

It would be very useful in stopping an odd accidentaly infected person,

from entering the USA or Australia, yes.

But if a Bio-terrorist released some on the New york subway,

airport quarantine aint stopping squat, because multiple tens of thousands

of people all potential carriers would be through the net before symptoms

started showing and could be all over the USA and other parts of the

world, including many ME countries.

 

Dave:

The trouble is, Ebola is a very, very efficient virus when it comes to killing a patient and as such, the epidemic would tend to burn out rapidly. You'd see a high outbreak at first, and then the death tolls would reduce rather rapidly. You can model this using something like the SEIR equations.

Are you sure? Because Flu can't reinfect a person until it's had time to

mutate, flu lasts about as long as ebola, and flu sems to spread quite

fine and infects a lot of people before dying out, now I grant normal Ebola would burn itself out, but depending on how much the society paniced, the burn out toll in say New York could be 1-5 Million+.

 

Dave:

It's much more effective (and, I daresay, easier) for a load of terrorists to detonate a nuclear warhead than pull off a feat like releasing a strain of Ebola into the country. If you want a non-sciency kind of view on this, then I suggest you read Tom Clancy's book, "Executive Decision". It's rather a good read, and the science behind it seems to be valid enough.

 

I recall about this time last year, the soviets found a guy dead

on a train, he was carrying unshielded C60 pellets under his jacket.

Aparently he was supposed to deliver them to someone, oops.

Unshielded Nuclear materials can kill you just as much as unshielded

bio or chem weapons.

 

Cheers.

[Dave]

Err' date=' I'm pretty sure there have been multi villiage outbreaks, and

Africa is getting more urbanised because that's where the jobs are.

Ebola will still be here 20 years from now.[/quote']

 

Sure, it'll be here 20 years from now. But Africa is still, for the most part, sparsely populated.

 

In the open sun sure, but it's also really good at infecting people.

People with ebola bleed everywhere, this blood teams with live infectious

virus, they cough, also teeming with virus, I'm no sure about the 1-2 mins,

but even given that that's plenty if you happen to be around.

 

The point I was trying to make is that this virus isn't the super-virus that everyone sees it to be. Some strains may be aerosol transmitted, but it's still very delicate. You could kill it with some normal household materials quite easily. It's not that easy to transmit.

 

As far as I'm aware, the time quoted is for the virus being released into a normal sample of air with no outside factors.

 

It would be very useful in stopping an odd accidentaly infected person,

from entering the USA or Australia, yes.

But if a Bio-terrorist released some on the New york subway,

airport quarantine aint stopping squat, because multiple tens of thousands

of people all potential carriers would be through the net before symptoms

started showing and could be all over the USA and other parts of the

world, including many ME countries.

 

Not necessarily.

 

First of all, for this supposed terrorist attack to occur, it would have to be done covertly. The reason? Well, if you just walk into an airport/large public place with a large container full of viral load, and assuming you're not caught and deploy the virus, it's not going to be very hard for your average security guard to see what's going on. The flights/trains will be grounded and the entire area quarantined. Whilst a relatively small number of people will escape, the resultant infection should be fairly small if effective precautions are brought in elsewhere.

 

All of this means the virus would have to be transported in fairly small containers. Coupled with the fact that the virus has 1-2 minutes survival time, you'd probably only infect a handful of people. The terrorists would be betting that the incubation period is long enough to infect enough people before the authorities and places like CDC realise what's going on. To this end, they would have to target multiple facilities to maximize the outbreak.

 

So yes, although it would infect some/quite a lot of people, the attack wouldn't be as successful as you'd think - as long as the appropriate measures were taken to deal with the outbreak, that is.

 

Are you sure?

 

I'm quite sure. Influenza is a totally different beast to Ebola.

 

the burn out toll in say New York could be 1-5 Million+.

 

Care to quote your sources?

 

I recall about this time last year, the soviets found a guy dead

on a train, he was carrying unshielded C60 pellets under his jacket.

Aparently he was supposed to deliver them to someone, oops.

Unshielded Nuclear materials can kill you just as much as unshielded

bio or chem weapons.

 

Indeed they can, although I fail to see the point.

[bascule]

All of this means the virus would have to be transported in fairly small containers. Coupled with the fact that the virus has 1-2 minutes survival time, you'd probably only infect a handful of people. The terrorists would be betting that the incubation period is long enough to infect enough people before the authorities and places like CDC realise what's going on. To this end, they would have to target multiple facilities to maximize the outbreak.

 

That's exactly the scenario Tom Clancy described in his book Executive Orders, where a terrorist group weaponized Ebola Zaire. They placed small aerosol pumps at a variety of locations.

 

The real secret, of course, is avoiding a quarantine for as long as possible, and there are several ways to effectively do that. If you wish to target an airport, target busses and shuttles headed towards the airport, don't attempt to deploy an aerosol pump in the middle of a crowded airport where there are security guards and cameras. Remember, Ebola has an incubation period of 2-21 days, so as long as you hit something in an undetectable manner and leave no record of doing so, it will be at least 2 days before the CDC catches on to the problem. Hit airports, subways, bus terminals, train stations, whatever major transportation thoroughfares you can think of all over the country simultaneously, and the CDC will find itself with a major, uncontainable outbreak on its hands.

[Dave]

There's only so many places that you can hit at one time. For one, you'd need a lot of people to produce the samples and containers, then another load of people to actually deploy them. Plus, obtaining the virus isn't exactly child's play, either. The more people you have, the more chance there is of getting caught. Something like Ebola just isn't practical for this kind of warfare.

 

It is indeed the same scenario that Clancy uses, and that's because it's the most efficient for the given scenario.

[husmusen]

Dave:

The point I was trying to make is that this virus isn't the super-virus

that everyone sees it to be. Some strains may be aerosol transmitted,

but it's still very delicate. You could kill it with some normal

household materials quite easily. It's not that easy to transmit.

 

I never said it was a super-virus, that may be a better label

for the ebola-pox hybrid. Chlorine will kill most things,

but it's not very injectable, the problem isn't Ebola on the bench.

The problem is when it gets into a human being.

 

I will stand by my claims that Ebola is a very nasty bug.

 

First of all, for this supposed terrorist attack to occur, it

would have to be done covertly. The reason? Well, if you just

walk into an airport/large public place with a large container

full of viral load, and assuming you're not caught and deploy

the virus, it's not going to be very hard for your average security

guard to see what's going on. The flights/trains will be grounded and

the entire area quarantined. Whilst a relatively small number of

people will escape, the resultant infection should be fairly small

if effective precautions are brought in elsewhere.

 

Uh huh, I'll post more on this.

 

All of this means the virus would have to be transported in fairly

small containers. Coupled with the fact that the virus has 1-2

minutes survival time, you'd probably only infect a handful of

people. The terrorists would be betting that the incubation period

is long enough to infect enough people before the authorities and

places like CDC realise what's going on. To this end, they would

have to target multiple facilities to maximize the outbreak.

 

1) Yes and surely terrorists have never demonstrated an ability

to target multiple targets in simultaneous strikes,

cough* Sarin attacks, 9-11* cough.

 

2) You don't need big containers to carry a large amount of

virus.

 

As for a handful that depends on how well your terrorist knows

what he is doing, it is possible to greatly amply the infectiousness

of an aerosol, I do not intend to go into this in detail

for fairly obvious reasons.

 

Put it this way, What if all those people in the Tokyo gas attack,

had instead of falling I'll immediately, had gone about their

day, and 10% of everyone they contacted also became poisoned

with the ability to poison others in turn.

 

I'm not saying it's a doomsday bug, but it's capable of being

much nastier than a chemical weapon.

 

I'm quite sure. Influenza is a totally different beast to Ebola.

 

It is and it isn't.

I was comparing the spread.

 

The great Spanish Flu epidemic, killed I think 10% of infected

people vs 95% with Ebola. So Ebola doesn't have to be as infectious

to cause the same amount of devestation.

 

Although I'm not sure if it can spread via phlem, it causes

bleeding into the lungs. This causes violent fits of coughing,

this coughing contains millions of microscipic blood/serum

droplets. All loaded with virus.

 

Flu spreads by irritating various linings causing the

patient to cough, spreading flu loaded droplets everywhere.

These two Xmission methods are quite similar.

 

Ebola has the additional means of causing the patient to bleed

everywhere. It comes out the eyes, in the urine, through the skin,

they vomit blood, it's in the feaces. And it's all infectious.

 

From the centre for disease control:

 

While all Ebola virus species have displayed the ability to be

spread through airborne particles (aerosols) under research

conditions, this type of spread has not been documented among

humans in a real-world setting, such as a hospital or household.

 

This is very interesting and new to me, I suspect this would be the

reason why Ebola hasn't run rampant yet and may yeild clues for

prevention.

 

From CDC

The incubation period for Ebola HF ranges from 2 to 21 days.

 

That's a real bitch, an avg of the two yields ten days,

that's an awful long time to be shaking hands and then rubbing

ones eyes face or nose.

 

The onset of illness is abrupt and is characterized by fever, headache, joint and muscle aches, sore throat, and weakness

 

Sufferer: "Ah sh1t I got the flu."

 

followed by diarrhea, vomiting, and stomach pain.

 

Sufferer: "Oh I've got a bad flu this time."

 

You see if your avg person just took his/her codral and soldiered

on, you could have a much higher toll.

 

I can tell you right now a patient presenting with the above

in a country that is not known for ebola, is not going to

have the doctor thinking, "Oh no! This is ebola HF!"

 

Care to quote your sources?

 

No source just a quick guestimate from the known toll in medium

sized villiages in Africa. Extrapolated to a city with a lot

of people living in very high density.

 

Hence the very wide range I gave.

 

 

I fail to see your point.

 

Well, you wrote,

It's much more effective (and, I daresay, easier) for a load

of terrorists to detonate a nuclear warhead than pull off a

feat like releasing a strain of Ebola into the country.

 

And I posted the story of the dead geezer on the train.

The point is that the safety and ease of building Nuclear-weapons

is almost as exadurated as the horror and danger of Bio-weapons.

You'd have to know your stuff in either scenario or you'd end

up very dead.

 

Cheers.

[Dave]

I never said it was a super-virus' date=' that may be a better label

for the ebola-pox hybrid. Chlorine will kill most things,

but it's not very injectable, the problem isn't Ebola on the bench.

The problem is when it gets into a human being.

 

I will stand by my claims that Ebola is a very nasty bug.[/quote']

 

Well, there's not really much of a question mark on that statement.

 

 

 

1) Yes and surely terrorists have never demonstrated an ability

to target multiple targets in simultaneous strikes,

cough* Sarin attacks, 9-11* cough.

 

I wasn't doubting their abilities to co-ordinate attacks. What I was questioning was the ability to co-ordinate a very large number of attacks without security forces noticing. Remember these people work in cells to avoid detection, and when you have a lot of cells on the move, people pick up on this.

 

2) You don't need big containers to carry a large amount of

virus.

 

No, you don't. But the size of the container limits how far you can get the virus quite significantly.

 

Put it this way, What if all those people in the Tokyo gas attack,

had instead of falling I'll immediately, had gone about their

day, and 10% of everyone they contacted also became poisoned

with the ability to poison others in turn.

 

I'm not saying it's a doomsday bug, but it's capable of being

much nastier than a chemical weapon.

 

There's no doubting that it is nastier than a chemical weapon. The main impact is the psychological impact on a nation, showing that they can be infected at the terrorists' whim.

 

It is and it isn't.

I was comparing the spread.

 

My point is that the two are nothing alike. The spread of a disease depends greatly on the number of people initially infected, where they're infected, and most importantly the characteristics of the disease.

 

The great Spanish Flu epidemic, killed I think 10% of infected

people vs 95% with Ebola. So Ebola doesn't have to be as infectious

to cause the same amount of devestation.

 

I'm fairly certain that people like the US military have modelled quite a lot of bio-warfare attacks. With the proper precautions, you can prevent these things from killing too many people. Remember, the Spanish Flu epidemic was back in the early 1900's just after the war. We've come quite a long way since then in terms of dealing with things like epidemics.

 

Although I'm not sure if it can spread via phlem, it causes

bleeding into the lungs. This causes violent fits of coughing,

this coughing contains millions of microscipic blood/serum

droplets. All loaded with virus.

 

Flu spreads by irritating various linings causing the

patient to cough, spreading flu loaded droplets everywhere.

These two Xmission methods are quite similar.

 

Sure, the emission methods are similar. The difference is that influenza survives for up to an hour (as far as I'm aware) in the open air, which gives it time to find a victim or be left on a kitchen surface somewhere for someone to pick up. Ebola doesn't have this nicety.

 

That's a real bitch, an avg of the two yields ten days,

that's an awful long time to be shaking hands and then rubbing

ones eyes face or nose.

 

Even so, in a bio-warfare situation, some people are almost certain to come down with symptoms earlier than others and present to doctors with petechiae or other things that could tip them off. At this point, CDC are contacted and then (I presume) the Government gets involved.

 

You see if your avg person just took his/her codral and soldiered

on, you could have a much higher toll.

 

Most people will isolate themselves from the world by going to bed and not getting out until they feel better - especially with something as awful as flu, and even more so if you get it really bad. Yes, some people would be going around shaking hands and going and seeing people, but it's not as bad as you might believe it to be.

 

I can tell you right now a patient presenting with the above

in a country that is not known for ebola, is not going to

have the doctor thinking, "Oh no! This is ebola HF!"

 

No, they wouldn't. No right-minded doctor would. But, when they start with the onset of the second stage of symptoms, it's likely they'd go to the ER, and then a doctor would know almost certainly that something was seriously wrong.

 

No source just a quick guestimate from the known toll in medium

sized villiages in Africa. Extrapolated to a city with a lot

of people living in very high density.

 

Hence the very wide range I gave.

 

I would advise you not to guesstimate that kind of thing. The spread of disease is extremely complex, and depends on an awful lot of factors. Even when you think you know all of the variables, another one can crop up rather easily, throwing the entire situation down the toilet.

[Dak]

2) You don't need big containers to carry a large amount of

virus.

 

No' date=' you don't. But the size of the container limits how far you can get the virus quite significantly.[/quote']the terrorist could always self-infect and then move into position in the asymptomatic stage. when he becomes contagiouse, he could start to wander round infecting people. terrorists have used suicide- bombers, so suiscide-vectors doesnt sound too far fetched, and would remove the need for containers.

[Dave]

It's not a very efficient means of spreading the virus, and doesn't necessarily infect more people that way. In fact, you'd probably infect less people, since victims need to come in contact with infected bodily fluids or have some kind of sexual contact.

[bascule]

Hmm, perhaps this isn't such a big worry after all:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/health/05cnd-virus.html?hp&ex=1118030400&en=008f04349c604d5e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

 

Vaccine Shows Promise for Fighting Ebola Virus

 

Scientists trying to develop vaccines against Africa's deadly Marburg and Ebola viruses are reporting an important milestone, a new type of vaccine that prevents the diseases in monkeys. Successfully immunizing monkeys is an essential step toward the goal of producing vaccines for people.

 

Two new vaccines, one for Marburg and one for Ebola, were 100 percent effective in a study of 12 macaques being published today in the journal Nature Medicine. Monkeys given just one shot of vaccine and later injected with a high dose of virus did not even get sick. Normally, all the animals would be expected to die.

 

The Marburg and Ebola viruses are closely related, and in both people and monkeys they cause hemorrhagic fevers that can be fatal within a week. There is no vaccine or treatment for either disease. Death rates in people can be high, sometimes exceeding 80 or 90 percent.

 

Angola, where a Marburg epidemic was first detected in March, is still struggling to contain the disease, which has killed 340 of 408 victims. The virus is spread by contact with blood, saliva, vomit or other fluids from sick patients.

 

The two new vaccines are still experimental, and will not be ready even to be tested in people for at least two years. If human trials are successful, products might be ready for licensing five or six years from now, the researchers said. The vaccines would not be used for routine immunization, but would be given to health workers in high risk areas, virus researchers and people who had been exposed to the disease, like relatives and other close contacts of sick patients. Eventually, it might be possible to combine the vaccines to protect people from both diseases with a single shot.

 

The new vaccines are not the first to protect monkeys. An earlier one, first proved in 2003, may go into safety studies in people in the United States later this year. Each vaccine has its advocates, and researchers say it is advantageous to have several candidates on the horizon. The work described in Nature Medicine was done by scientists from the United States and Canada, led by Dr. Steven M. Jones and Dr. Heinz Feldmann of the Public Health Agency of Canada in Winnipeg, and Dr. Thomas W. Geisbert of the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md.

 

Dr. Jones said the goal of the research was to provide a vaccine that could be used to stop outbreaks like the one in Angola, or to protect people from germ warfare. He and other researchers said that governments and the military developed a strong interest in making vaccines against Ebola and Marburg during the 1990's after a Soviet defector said that the Russians had stockpiled the Marburg virus, weaponized it and packed it into warheads for possible use in attacks on cities or battlefields.

 

"Marburg and Ebola are not as significant threats as smallpox would be, but one could wreak incredible human health tragedies in this country and could probably create a huge economic burden even if the diseases didn't spread like wildfire," said Dr. Peter B. Jahrling, an author of the article and an expert on viruses and bioterrorism who used to work for the Department of Defense and is now a chief scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "But I think a lot of people here also see the humanitarian aspects of providing vaccine to people who need it."

 

Dr. Cathy Roth, head of the emerging and dangerous pathogen team at the World Health Organization, said: "This work is very interesting, very exciting and very promising. There's a long way to go before this vaccine could be put into people. But we really do hope it is pursued."

 

To make the vaccine, the scientists used another virus, VSV, for vesicular stomatitis virus, which causes a mouth disease in cattle but rarely infects people. They chose it because it has a similar genetic structure to the Marburg and Ebola viruses, and because other researchers have had success with it in developing vaccines.

[husmusen]

 

I'll be lining up for that one if I ever have to do any ebola nursing.

(Not that I think I will).

 

An interesting technique they used to get the prototype vaccine.

One can only hope the same promising results carry over to humans.

 

Cheers.