Malaria Vaccine and Numbers

As stated in class, recently, a malaria vaccine has been discovered. This article is about the first trial runs of the vaccine in 11 parts of sub-saharan Africa. At this point, it has shown that children who get the vaccine from 6-12 months of age have approximately a 50% chance of gaining immunity. Looking at the numbers, the values can seem small; 50% basically means one in every two people will gain immunity. It doesn’t seem like a lot, especially when compared to rotobacter vaccines which have a success rate from 70 to 90 percent. However, when looking at the big picture, it’s going to save about 106 million people from coming down with malaria, and about 400,000 from dying; and those are annual numbers, JUST IN AFRICA (though the total numbers aren’t too far off .

Getting to this point cost over $300 million dollars and decades of research. This actually was interesting because $300 million really isn’t that much compared to what most mega-corporations receive annually, or even what the government generates annually. For example, years ago, there was a 700 billion dollar bailout from the US government to big businesses. Remember that the U.S. government is actually in incredulous amounts of debt. Approximately .0004% of the money the US gave for the bailout to create a vaccine that would save approximately 400,000 people from dying annually. . Imagine if all the countries in the UN diverted resources of that magnitude towards reaching the MDGs; or even, just developing and distributing vaccinations. Financially, there should be no excuse why we haven’t reached our MDGs yet, all it should take is time; however, looking at the numbers, we should not be this far behind.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/10/18/early-results-show-a-first-ever-malaria-vaccine-protects-children/2/

Over 7 Billion

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/111030/world-population-reaches-7-billion

As mentioned in class multiple times, the world’s population has recently reached, and has most likely surpassed at this point, 7 billion. This claim carries both good and bad news. The good is that it is proof that, on average, people are starting to live longer and have more offspring; basically it means that the human species is succeeding in a Darwinian perspective. The bad news is that now, more than ever, we need to find more sustainable resources; because the planet definitely cannot support 7 billion people much longer if we use our resources at the same rate as we are now. One of the main problems is in food and hunger (as it usually is, it’s not so much that we don’t have enough food (we don’t), the main problem is that our distribution methods and allocation is shoddy at best. For example, most of the crops grown in the US is inedible by humans. A huge amount of corn grown is either used as biofuel or feed for livestock. Food being grown for livestock is necessary; however, a lot of the land used to make biofuels (all of it) could be used for actual food.

In an attempt to alleviate the food problems, Pepsi Co. and the World Food Program have created Enterprise EthioPEA, whose plan is to increase production of chickpeas in Ethiopia. This tactic, while good on paper, will probably not work. As stated in the article, chickpeas are staple in the diet of Ethiopians, which means chickpeas are probably already proliferant in Ethiopia. The program should probably be focused on growing more variety of food as chickpeas, while high in nutrition, don’t provide all the essentials one needs. Though, anything would help at this point.

Really, FDA? Really?

This article was a follow-up to an earlier article I posted about the initial Listeria-in-produce article that I wrote about a few weeks earlier. So far, the infection seems to be quarantined; however, around 135 people have already been infected and 25 people have died, making this the worst outbreak in nearly three decades.

The article describes how the source of Listeria wasn’t the cantaloupes itself (well, technically, it was) but rather, it was the highly unsanitary conditions in which the cantaloupes were processed. Allegedly, Jenson Farms (the farm that produced the infected melons) had purchased dirty equipment that was never really thoroughly cleaned (and was previously used to wash potatoes which normally grow in compost) and used it to pack the cantaloupes. Inspections have also shown that the processing plant itself was hard to clean, wasn’t cleaned, and had puddles all around the area. Basically it was a perfect place for Listeria cultures because it was damp, dirty, and cool.

This entire incident shows how loose the regulation on food processing is. The FDA is only allowed to hold inspections of food companies and processing plants once every FIVE to TEN years. These are plants that are distributing food to the US, possibly the entire world; things that go directly into people’s bodies and inspections are restricted to only once in five years?! The FDA even claims to have never been to Jenson Farms. Loose regulation is the underlying cause of why the outbreak occurred. Jenson Farms probably bought the dirty equipment because it was cheaper and didn’t clean their facility properly because it would have taken too much money for labor and cleaning supplies. If there was regulation for a REQUIRED check every year, or even half a year, those floors would be spotless and the machinery as well, meaning, no Listeria, and no deaths or sickness.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/10/20/listeria-outbreak-linked-to-cantaloupe-packing-equipment/

got killed by a one-a-day.

New developments in research have shown that Vitamin E supplements actually do more harm than good; at least in the case of prostate cancer rates. This is fairly ironic as a lot of people take Vitamin E supplements to deter cancer. It’s very alarming as most people in developed countries take multivitamins on a daily basis for “greater health purposes” and really, they could be slowly killing themselves. Prostate cancer is a large killer in the male population, and it might be this high because of the multivitamin supplements.

A potential reason why this is happening is that most people in developed countries don’t really need to take multi-vitamins. Most of the vitamins that we do need, if not all, we can easily get from food; and we usually do. That combined with the fact that many multivitamins pack more than 200% of a person’s daily recommended intake of vitamins and minerals could be causing an overflow of nutrients into the blood. Most people don’t realize that multivitamins don’t need to be taken every day; and most of the time the extra influx could be potentially dangerous; especially now that it has been shown that we don’t know the full extent of what taking the extra supplements will do for us in the long run.

Not to say that taking vitamins is all bad. There are still correlations with taking Vitamin E and reduced symptoms of Alzheimers. Basically, it’s a choice of the lesser evil. Which is worse, prostate cancer or Alzheimers?

http://healthland.time.com/2011/10/12/vitamin-e-may-increase-risk-of-prostate-cancer/

Stem Cells, still on the rise

http://healthland.time.com/2011/10/05/a-stem-cell-first-using-the-dolly-method-on-human-cells/

Once again, I will be talking about stem cells.

According to this article in Time Magazine, scientists from the New York Stem Cell foundation have found a way to use the same method of cloning that was used on Dolly the cloned sheep, to make viable stem cells from adult cells. This is a huge step in the process of getting stem cells to proliferate more in medical cures. Now that we can clone stem cells from adult cells, there is no reason to harvest them from the ovaries/eggs of a woman. This breakthrough means that more specialized stem cells can be made; this is important because the genome of every person is different than the next, which means there is a chance that a person could reject stem cells. With this breakthrough, a person could make his or her own stem cells, which would reduce (if not completely eliminate) gene based complications during transfer. This should lead to an end for the theocratic and ethical responses against stem cells because they’re taken from the eggs of a woman. Of course, there are still other concerns such as cloning, as this research also puts us one step closer to being able to replicate a human being.

Though, to note, this technology is not actually COMPLETELY here yet. Yes, the cells are viable, and yes, the process itself has been discovered; however, there are still many kinks to this process and complications that occur because of it such as extra chromosomes in the cells, which is not a good thing.

Listeria in Cantaloupes

http://healthland.time.com/2011/09/29/illness-deaths-from-listeria-tainted-cantaloupes-expected-to-rise/

Recently, one of the biggest food contaminations has occurred the US (possibly the world); depending on how far Jenson Farm Cantaloupes have been shipped. According to Time magazine and the CDC, so far, 76 illnesses and 16 deaths have been recorded due to listeria found in cantaloupes.

Listeria, or more specifically listeria monocytogenes, is a major human pathogen that, when infected with, can cause “Recently, one of the biggest food contaminations has occurred the US (possibly the world); depending on how far Jenson Farm Cantaloupes have been shipped. According to Time magazine and the CDC, so far, 76 illnesses and 16 deaths have been recorded due to listeria found in cantaloupes.

Listeria, or more specifically listeria monocytogenes, is a major human pathogen that, when infected with, can cause Recently, one of the biggest food contaminations has occurred the US (possibly the world); depending on how far Jenson Farm Cantaloupes have been shipped. According to Time magazine and the CDC, so far, 76 illnesses and 16 deaths have been recorded due to listeria found in cantaloupes.

Listeria, or more specifically listeria monocytogenes, is a major human pathogen that, when infected with, can cause “fever and muscle aches, sometimes preceded by diarrhea or other gastrointestinal symptoms. Other symptoms may include headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance and convulsions.” It mainly affects those that have a compromised immune system, a.k.a. the elderly, pregnant women, children, those infected with HIV/AIDS, those on chemotherapeutic drugs, etc.

The real problem this causes is that due to globalization and frequency of trade, farms in the US ship their goods out to the entire world (depending on the crop); and because of this listeria scare, many other farms and farmers are deciding to recall their crops as well. For example, a California based lettuce company has recently recalled. Thankfully, none of the 4.5 million cantaloupes that were shipped out have been exported to other countries; however, many other farms that have begun recalling their crops may have.

As this development is still fairly recent, and still ongoing, many other farms are likely to start recalling their crops. This will take a lot of resources, not only to ship the crops back to the source, but also to have the CDC and FDA test each harvest for traces of listeria. Also, as a lot of crops are being recalled, they are obviously not going to be redistributed, meaning that the agriculture sector is going to take a huge hit.

Stem Cells in Europe gets Green Light. Traffic ticket avoided.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/09/22/first-european-embryonic-stem-cell-trial-gets-green-light/

This article is about how stem cells have gotten a green light in Europe to cure patients with macular dystrophy (a disease that causes blindness in many young people). The cells will be injected directly into the eye in which the stem cells will begin to differentiate and replace all the old dead eye cells, hopefully restoring vision to the patient. The reason that stem cells are stuck in a "medical limbo" is because of ethical and experimental reasons. Stem cells originate from embryos (non-fertilized) which have cells that have no differentiated and can potentially turn into anything. Stem cells are ethically debatable because of theological reasons and because embryos are being used and the potential applications for stem cells can be very good (curing paralysis, curing diseases, reducing amputations, etc.) and also very bad (cloning, artificial humans, etc.). They are also scientifically debatable because the long term effects of having stem cells injected into an organism are not fully known.

If these experiments go well, and stem cell research becomes less taboo, the benefits are innumerable. Countless diseases and physical handicaps will soon be able to be cured. A whole new area of study will be created. As the technology becomes more normalized and techniques of harvesting, or even creating, stem cells become refined; it will become cheaper and cheaper to utilize them. They will be able to be used throughout the world where they are desperately needed: developing nations.