[HN Gopher] Malaria vaccine delivered by a mosquito bite
___________________________________________________________________
Malaria vaccine delivered by a mosquito bite
Author : gmays
Score : 84 points
Date : 2024-11-24 18:40 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| theultdev wrote:
| Yeah let's not do this. I'd rather we eradicate the mosquitos
| themselves.
|
| What could go wrong with nonconsensual, covert, forced mass
| injections.
|
| Today it's used for malaria, tomorrow?
|
| When releasing these mosquitos, will they be getting consent of
| everyone in the area?
| sebtron wrote:
| Do regular mosquitos ask for consent before biting you?
| theultdev wrote:
| Do you think it's okay to kill a human because other animals
| kill humans?
|
| Just because nature does something, doesn't mean it's okay to
| allow humans to do it.
| therein wrote:
| This is not a regular mosquito anymore.
|
| Imagine the following: we found the part of the brain that's
| making you love everything done by the authority. We
| developed a genetic vaccine against it and we are deploying
| it via mosquitos.
|
| You wouldn't say the same thing.
| vlod wrote:
| >I'd rather we eradicate the mosquitos themselves.
|
| And you know the extent of this on the whole eco-system?
| theultdev wrote:
| Do you know the extent of injecting modified parasites on the
| human population?
|
| And yes, many places have eradicated mosquitos with no shift
| in the ecosystem.
|
| It's pretty much the one creature that all animals would love
| to have eradicated or at the very least mitigated.
| vlod wrote:
| > And yes, many places have eradicated mosquitos with no
| shift in the ecosystem.
|
| I read that the tropical rain forests are unlivable by
| humans because of mosquitos and that limits the amount of
| deforestation that occurs.
|
| Whether that's really true or worthwhile I'll leave it to
| others to argue over.
| dheera wrote:
| I mean, Indonesia has 280 million people living in a
| tropical rainforest climate ... that's 80% of the US
| population, on a a bunch of tropical islands.
|
| Deforestation is an issue, as those 280 million people do
| need to be fed. Mosquitoes don't really get in the way of
| deforestation. Insect repellents and pesticides do work.
| And when an area is deforested and either converted to
| urban or agricultural land, mosquitoes don't really
| linger in that area anymore.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Not really true.
|
| Mosquitos are an important part of the ecosystem, they
| (especially their larva) are important food sources for
| other creatures.
|
| However, most species of mosquitoes do not bite humans and
| not all of those are capable of spreading disease. What you
| are probably referencing is experiments in extermining
| specific disease carrying species. I don't think those
| studies have claimed "no shift in the ecosystem."
| chmod775 wrote:
| Mosquitos are a food source for some reptiles, fish, birds,
| and other insects and male mosquitos also serve as
| pollinators, of which many a species are already in danger.
| theultdev wrote:
| When people talk about mosquito eradication programs,
| they're talking about subspecies that suck blood and
| carry the major diseases like malaria. Not all mosquitos.
| trod1234 wrote:
| That line of reasoning neglects the fact that there is
| very little control in such systems that differentiate
| between the subspecies.
|
| CRISPR for example has been hailed as surgical tool for
| slicing DNA, and works well in controlled environments
| because we set up methodology and environment to
| guarantee it.
|
| This has lead many outside the related fields to believe
| that the tool alone has more control than it does. In
| reality, any changes with these tools must be formally
| verified through plasmid sequencing. This is
| Plasmidsaurus business model, and they are quite good at
| it.
|
| Even afterwards though, outside very specific conditions
| (which are often involved in keeping it cold and below
| certain safety thresholds), unstable changes can occur,
| the effects of which we will never know beforehand. A
| shift by 1 base (3 bases per codon) may alter an entire
| sequence, but the molecular machinery would continue
| running until it is stopped.
|
| It may result in death of the mosquito, and/or provide
| material (shedding/ingestion) that may be taken in by
| other unrelated species with unknown consequence.
|
| Who is to say what impacts that might have, and with each
| additional node (mosquito), the chance of such outcomes
| increase greatly. To my knowledge, there have been very
| few studies that cover the topic of genomic stability
| with regards to CRISPR and its related tools. This is an
| area with extremely low visibility to potential
| consequences.
|
| The very last outcome we want is for animals to attain a
| defiant pupil, along the plot line of Zoo.
| ben_w wrote:
| The "today x tomorrow y" argument doesn't work, as the villains
| of tomorrow don't care about any success of x.
|
| For all x and y.
| theultdev wrote:
| Developing X allows villians to use X to do Y.
| ben_w wrote:
| The villains can develop x and y all by themselves.
| cosmojg wrote:
| I mean, the paper's been published. The cat's out of the bag.
| If a sufficiently motivated villain wants to use this
| technology for villainy, they can now.
| nonelog wrote:
| So no say at all, as to what goes into our own bodies? Really?
| autoexec wrote:
| > So no say at all, as to what goes into our own bodies?
| Really?
|
| Right? Everyone has been kindly asking malaria to stay out of
| our bodies for ages now! Malaria has no respect at all for our
| rights!
| chung8123 wrote:
| We don't put malaria into mosquitos to spread it.
| autoexec wrote:
| If we did we could just stop doing that, but sadly, we
| don't have that option.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| It's like the trolley problem but one side of the track is
| clear. But the concept is now so deeply engrained that some
| people still object to the idea of pulling the lever.
| from-nibly wrote:
| The trolley problem is not for assesing ends vs means
| discussions, or greater good discussions. It's for
| asessing how people interpret responsibility.
| ben_w wrote:
| It's not quite that.
|
| If this was a trolly problem, one side would have several
| million deaths, there's a lot of switches we can activate
| at any time, and we're not entirely sure how many people
| are on each of the other tracks just that there's not
| many before the bend in the line that takes it through a
| thick dark jungle of our ignorance.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| The difference is that Malaria can't gather consent from us.
| Unlike medical researchers, who have routinely been required
| to get consent before conducting research or before spreading
| synthetic materials into our bodies. Without consent you're
| essentially acting like Josef Mengele.
| didibus wrote:
| It's not talking about releasing them in the wild. It would be
| how you get your shot, because apparently it resulted in better
| protection when delivered through a bite for some reason.
|
| But I get your general sentiment. It's a scary thought, not
| just this, but the idea that we are now in a place where
| someone could use mosquitos to deliver chemical weapons, kind
| of scary.
|
| Also, I'm no expert, but I'm not sure that is a right, if I
| understand Roe vs Wade reversal, it means the constitution is
| no longer interpreted to assume bodily autonomy as a
| constitutional right. And even if it was, that's just in the
| US, there's many countries where this wouldn't be the case.
|
| It also begs the question, many things enter our bodies, all
| pollutants for example, radiation, and so on, and we tend to
| have no or very little say into that as well, what makes it
| into our waters and air and food, and so on.
|
| Anyways, I think it's an interesting topic, and a good one to
| discuss.
| beala wrote:
| Malaria carrying mosquitoes already deliver a malaria vaccine.
| It's just that that vaccine has a terrible side effect:
| malaria.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| End circumcising first and we can talk about other types of
| bodily autonomy movements.
| autoexec wrote:
| Man, the conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day with
| this news, but I think this is great! While I'd still prefer we
| just eradicate the disease carrying mosquito population entirely,
| this keeps our enemy in the ecosystem where they can be some
| other critter's breakfast while still helping to mitigate one of
| the worst harms they cause us.
| theultdev wrote:
| How is it great? It's the equivalent of someone coming up to
| you with a needle full of something and stabbing you with it
| (that they already stabbed other people with) without your
| consent.
|
| I just don't see how injecting people with genetically modified
| parasites without their consent is "great".
| nancybelowzero wrote:
| The same thing ordinary mosquitoes do already?
| theultdev wrote:
| Yeah and some animals kill humans, does that mean it's okay
| to kill humans too?
|
| Right now you can consent to get a malaria vaccine, no
| covert parasite needed.
|
| If the counter that it is for poorer populations, I'd still
| say you may want to ask them if they want to be injected
| with a genetically modified parasite. If one single person
| doesn't want to be in the area, you shouldn't do it. Would
| you support them dropping these in _your_ neighborhood?
| zwirbl wrote:
| I don't live in malaria country, but yes, absolutely.
| While we are at it, something just like this for Lyme
| disease and TBE would be the icing on the cake.
| theultdev wrote:
| Alright, now go ask all of your neighbors if they want a
| genetically modified parasite injected into them. If
| everyone is okay with it, then proceed.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| I already have to breathe in pollutants released into my
| neighbourhood by other people without my consent. I have
| to deal with the aggregated effects of bad economic
| decisions made by others. Getting infected with a malaria
| vaccine instead of actual malaria via a mosquito bite
| without my consent would be the most benign of this type
| of problem.
|
| Oh, and this already happens with the attenuated polio
| vaccine. People can catch the vaccine from those who have
| been immunised, in a similar way to how they could catch
| the virus. Delivering the vaccine the same way the
| pathogen spreads also allows people to opt out by
| following the same techniques they would to avoid the
| actual disease. You can use mosquito nets, mosquito
| sprays, etc., to help avoid both malaria and the
| mosquito-delivered vaccine.
| ChrisClark wrote:
| Just like a mosquito does?
| autoexec wrote:
| The entire problem is that we can't stop someone (namely Mr.
| Mosquito) from coming up to us with a needle full of
| something and stabbing us with it (that they already stabbed
| other people with) without our consent.
|
| I'd much prefer we got rid of Mr. Mosquito, but if we won't
| (or can't) we can at least make sure that what's in that
| jerk's needle stops killing people every day.
| theultdev wrote:
| We can get rid of disease-carrying mosquitos, many
| countries do it.
|
| You can modify them to not reproduce if you're modifying
| them already for this instance.
|
| If it's a matter of "won't" then we should ask "why not",
| instead of allowing someone to do this.
| kevlened wrote:
| > We can get rid of mosquitos, many countries do it.
|
| Curious to know where I can find no mosquitoes, other
| than Iceland and Antarctica.
| theultdev wrote:
| Thailand and many asian countries have eradicated the
| troubling mosquitos (not entirely but with great success,
| especially in urban areas)
|
| The US has also had great success in their eradication
| and mitigation programs.
| notahacker wrote:
| They're more likely to give you dengue than malaria, but
| one thing Thailand has definitely not eradicated is the
| likelihood of getting bitten by mosquitos with great
| regularity...
| theultdev wrote:
| Yes and you still get bit in the US but malaria is a
| thing of the past.
|
| The point is not to get rid of all mosquitos, just the
| disease-carrying ones.
| autoexec wrote:
| Aren't all mosquitos that bite humans potentially the
| disease-carrying ones? In the US we've just been fairly
| lucky but it's not as if mosquitos carrying West
| Nile/Zika/Chikungunya/Eastern Equine Encephalitis aren't
| infecting Americans
| j-bos wrote:
| Maybe not mosquitos, but the US maintains a screwworm
| wall that keeps them from eating anyone anything north of
| Panama.
| Facemelters wrote:
| you think there's ... less risk with genetically
| modifying a species to die out?
| theultdev wrote:
| Yes, we've been doing it for awhile in the US.
|
| Thailand has also done it with great success.
| Lordarminius wrote:
| You hold a very simplistic and naive view.
| pesus wrote:
| You're welcome to contribute anything to the conversation
| besides blindly throwing out insults with no explanation.
| greycol wrote:
| The person he's replying to has a simplistic view, his
| view is "injecting parasites into people without their
| permision bad" a very fine view to have. However we're
| discussing a situation where these parasites are infact
| symbiotes, were alternatives are more deaths.
|
| We're also not doing it from a position of "mosquitos
| couldn't be used to spread human selectable things to
| kill humans before and now people suddenly can spread
| genetically modified killer parasites".
|
| The one thing this research does is add the ability to
| spread immunity to malaria through mosquito population it
| doesn't change anything else about what could be spread
| by mosquitos before. People have been using animals to
| spread disease as a weapon of war since medieval times
| this is not a new vector that will suddenly be exploited.
|
| This can only be a good thing unless you view the
| vaccines as a danger worse than the disease (which with
| such a widespread and deadly disease would be rather
| unlikely in any objective sense) or to be simplistic you
| believe in the inalienable right to be a vector to spread
| diseases to those around you.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Have you heard about the old style glass injectors?
| yreg wrote:
| Seems like you just described mandatory vaccination. Which is
| indeed great in case of many vaccines.
| aredox wrote:
| People are already infecting other people without my consent.
| How do you think I got COVID, the flu, etc.?
| l3x4ur1n wrote:
| It seems to me the people here don't live in malaria infested
| countries. I think the victims would be gladly bitten by a
| vaccine than a deadly virus.
| ChrisClark wrote:
| The vaccine misinformation has created entire groups of people
| irrationally terrified of them. :( And those people are only
| going to cause more death and suffering because of their
| ignorance. :(
| throwway120385 wrote:
| There's a big difference between intentionally exposing a
| single consenting person to a modified pathogen for the
| purpose of giving them resistance and intentionally releasing
| a modified pathogen into the environment and allowing it to
| spread by its usual vector to the consenting and unconsenting
| alike without any regard.
|
| If this were a virus created using gain of function research
| we would call it a biological weapon. But because the intent
| is different we're supposed to be excited and accepting of
| it?
|
| The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
| ben_w wrote:
| Although I agree that medical consent is important and the
| road to hell is so paved:
|
| > But because the intent is different we're supposed to be
| excited and accepting of it?
|
| One could say that it's the intent which varies between a
| heart transplant and an Azrec blood sacrifice.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > One could say that it's the intent which varies between
| a heart transplant and an Azrec blood sacrifice
|
| I would say that consent is the key distinguishing factor
| and intent follows afterwards.
| theultdev wrote:
| > One could say that it's the intent which varies between
| a heart transplant and an Azrec blood sacrifice.
|
| Heart transplants are from consenting donors that have
| recently diseased, not living victims murdered solely for
| their organs. Blood sacrifices do not involve taking the
| heart and saving a live either. So no intent is not the
| variance there.
| ben_w wrote:
| That sounds as much "intent" as what I replied to.
|
| Which is why I gave that exact example.
| tempestn wrote:
| People take actions every day that affect others, some
| negatively and some positively, and don't receive consent
| for each one. We don't need consent to put exhaust or other
| harmful chemicals into the air, and those are an explicit
| negative. Something like this could be a huge positive,
| potentially saving millions of lives. If the projected
| benefits to risks are sufficient (and I'm not saying they
| necessarily are, but if that turned out to be the case
| based on further testing), there is a point at which it
| would be worthwhile, despite it not being possible to get
| individual consent.
| notahacker wrote:
| > If this were a virus created using gain of function
| research we would call it a biological weapon.
|
| Except it's the literal opposite of gain of function: it's
| the _subtraction_ of function from a pathogen which already
| exists in the environment and already infects people on a
| regular basis in the environment, turning it from a deadly
| killer into something that dies quickly and without
| reproducing when it meets the human immune system.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > vaccine misinformation has created entire groups of people
| irrationally terrified
|
| I am terrified of them but I'm fairly certain it's
| rationalized. The medical community decided it's more
| important to bully their patients into compliance than to
| listen to their concerns and work with them. The vaccine
| absolutely had side effects for some individuals and they
| were treated very poorly, in particular at the beginning of
| the pandemic, due to this attitude of "fighting
| misinformation." Our medical institutions were put to
| propaganda purposes rather than healthcare purposes and the
| results were absolutely horrific.
|
| > to cause more death and suffering
|
| This is predicated on the belief that "herd immunity" is
| valid and universal to all vaccines and that, again, bullying
| people who are afraid into choices they're not comfortable
| with is somehow justifiable due to it. As if letting a for
| profit institution inject random goop into me is a natural
| thing to _not_ be generally wary or afraid of.
|
| Just because you think you have "the science" doesn't mean
| you get a free pass on "patient rights."
| theultdev wrote:
| It seems to me the people here think it's a good idea because
| they know they won't be dropped on _them_ , they'll be dropped
| in other countries.
|
| The countries they live in are malaria free because they
| eradicated the disease-carrying mosquitos and developed their
| healthcare system.
|
| Developing the healthcare system of a country helps with more
| diseases and keeps consent. It also doesn't open you up for a
| potential biological weapon if some entity decided to misuse it
| (Russia, CIA, etc.)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Not for that much longer. I believe that our Southern States
| are starting to see malaria mosquitoes (again -they used to
| be here, before).
|
| There's a few types of malaria, not all are deadly, but none
| are fun.
|
| But in the Climate Change Sweepstakes, Malaria has the
| winning ticket...
| aphantastic wrote:
| Yes, Florida for instance recently had their first
| documented cases of malaria in decades - immediately
| following the launch of a GMO mosquito manufacturing and
| distribution lab.
|
| Not to worry: the scientists at lab promised the two events
| were totally unrelated.
| mathgeek wrote:
| Do you have a source or specific links to learn more
| about that lab?
| hammock wrote:
| Do you? People in malaria endemic areas understand that there
| is some base level of resistance that develops among the locals
| over time, the exaggeration about harm goes in both directions
| nancybelowzero wrote:
| I had this idea when I was 7. I would spend all day outside and
| get tons of mosquito bites, but also sometimes I would go to the
| doctor to get shots. They seemed to me to be not entirely
| different things, so I would wonder why they couldn't just put
| the shots into mosquitos, since they didn't hurt as much.
|
| And it turns out, you can!
| theultdev wrote:
| They're not putting shots into the mosquitos. They're modifying
| the parasite the mosquito injects that lives in your liver.
|
| When you were 7, did you yearn for modified parasites?
| greycol wrote:
| To be honest yes, lots of super hero stories about them.
| Though to be fair they're called symbiotes when they're
| helpful.
| rvz wrote:
| What was once a conspiracy theory is now longer one.
| chaosbolt wrote:
| Eventually we'll be able (as in it will be possible) to
| pinpoint some "contrarian" gene, then make something that only
| kills these individuals, and put it into mosquitoes.
|
| Now if it's possible to do then obviously some government
| somewhere will do it (eventually), and no one will notice
| anything, say it's something that gives you a heart attack, and
| say we see a spike in heart attacks in 2050, it won't even be
| that significant since contrarian individuals are few, and just
| like that after a year the population will be a lot more
| docile.
|
| It's still a sci-fi scenario now but it's scary to think about
| what the future will hold.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| We can do basically this today. _I_ could probably do it, if
| I decided to throw my entire life away (which, if I 'm
| considering killing, is the minimum bar _anyway_ ) - though,
| not reliably and not without side effects. For an
| organisation of significant size, it's a question of how
| sophisticated they'd want to be.
|
| The main obstacle to your sci-fi scenario is that, to date,
| no such "contrarian gene" has been identified. In fact,
| _most_ traits you 'd want to genocide away seem tenuously
| related to particular alleles, at best. Unless we start
| seeing fanatical HERC2 purists, or the people making
| bioweapons decide they don't care about collateral in the War
| Against Redheads, we're probably safe from genetically-
| selective mosquito-induced heart attacks.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| The attenuated polio vaccine has already worked this way for
| more than 70 years. People can catch the vaccine like how they
| can catch the virus. This has had positive effects on boosting
| immunity in developing countries where the parents may be
| unable to take their children to be vaccinated, due to work
| commitments, expenses of travelling to the nearest clinic, etc.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| A few years ago I found myself chatting to a guy who had worked
| as a software engineer-turned malarial epidemiologist at a well
| known UK university. He told me he had "run away screaming" from
| that field and switched a different one because he was so shocked
| by what he saw in the field of malaria research.
|
| As he explained it, the big problem is the field's dependence on
| funding from the Gates Foundation. Philanthropic funding isn't
| bad _per se_ but the issue is that Gates specifically wants a
| legacy. That means he 's not really interested in funding
| mitigation, he's only interested in eradication. A lot of
| researchers in the field think eradication isn't practical, but
| they keep their views private because you have to be gung-ho
| about eradication if you want access to the BMG Foundation
| funding stream. He said the result is a lot of grant proposals
| that are deliberately either vague or deceptive so money intended
| for eradication efforts can get spent on more useful stuff.
|
| Beyond creating a culture where researchers routinely
| misrepresent their work and views, he told me the bigger problem
| was that it caused them to take extreme risks. Prototypical
| example: blanket spray an area with anti-malarial drugs. If it
| works then hooray, you eradicated malaria from that area. Until
| it returns, that is. But if it doesn't work then you just bred a
| new strain of malaria that's resistant to all known medications.
| It's the same problem as over-use of antibiotics.
|
| A malaria vaccine delivered by mosquito sounds like the exact
| problem he was talking about, except times a million. One problem
| that can occur with vaccines - that gets drowned out and censored
| by the public health lobby and its allies - is that they can
| cause displacement rather than eradication. In other words you
| successfully vaccinate against one strain of the pathogen, but
| then it mutates under selection pressure to dodge immune systems
| that are "overfitted" to the prior strain. When invaded by the
| new strain the body doesn't recognize quickly enough that its
| antibodies no longer dock correctly, and so it spends a lot of
| time creating those when it should be trying to find new
| antibodies instead.
|
| This problem is sometimes called immune imprinting, OAS or some
| other names and it's especially nasty because it misleads
| researchers doing drug trials. They develop a very targeted test
| against a pathogen (PCR or so), they make a vaccine against it,
| they vaccinate a trial population, the test drops to zero so they
| roll it out to the wider population. Success! Except then some
| years later some assholes point out that mortality didn't
| actually drop in that targeted population. All that happened is
| the pathogen mutated to the point neither the test nor the immune
| system recognize it, and so people are just getting sick with the
| variant instead. Unfortunately, awareness of this problem is very
| low because anyone who points it out is immediately targeted for
| cancellation and censorship for being an "anti-vaxxer" (they
| aren't anti-vaccine, they just want vaccines that are broad
| spectrum enough to actually achieve mortality reductions). Also
| public health institutions, having rolled out a vaccine, are
| loathe to admit in public it was all for nothing as they fear
| that it would lower compliance in future campaigns.
|
| All this is a long way of saying THIS IS BAD DON'T DO IT. The
| risk is real that it backfires in ways that break existing anti-
| malarial drugs, the funding situation creates strong incentives
| to ignore this risk, and there's a history of it happening and
| then being swept under the rug.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Can you give a tangible example of a vaccine that was evaded to
| the extent that there was no improvement in mortality from that
| disease?
| tokinonagare wrote:
| He's speaking of research programs, not commercialized
| products. It's totally believable that some researchers would
| deploy a prototype somewhere, collect and tweak data to show
| it's effective then never check again. I worked in a field
| far from medicine and it was the same exact way of doing.
|
| His description of funding theatre is also fitting what I've
| seen in academia. Your question is a cheap way to try to
| devaluate the credibility of the post (probably on an
| ideological background), but what is written is hundred
| percent credible for anyone with experience in research. I've
| a friend working on pathogens for her PhD, funded by the
| Gates foundation and when I asked a question about it the
| answer wasn't exactly positive.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I'm not trying to "devaluate" anything, I'm asking for more
| information as someone who is fairly familiar with public
| health research. Thankfully Mike was kind enough to provide
| a substantive answer.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Respiratory virus vaccines can suffer this issue because of
| how quickly those kinds of viruses mutate.
|
| Flu vaccines are notorious for not reducing the mortality of
| the elderly whilst being reported as highly effective. They
| can even increase mortality from the flu due to late response
| caused by overfitting. The problem is twofold here: the
| vaccines cause displacement so they look good in trials, but
| then they also look good in observational data because the
| sort of people who sign up voluntarily for flu shots are just
| paying much more attention to their health in general so
| there's a selection bias effect. This paper tried to fix the
| selection bias and:
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2728831/
|
| _" We found that flu shots reduced all-cause mortality among
| elderly Kaiser Permanente members by 4.6% during 9
| laboratory-defined flu seasons in Northern California. Other
| researchers have reported that flu shots reduce mortality by
| much greater amounts."_
|
| Overfitting can exacerbate the problem by causing
| displacement to a variant that's worse. Here's an example
| from 2009 where Canadian authorities investigated the
| effectiveness of the trivalent influenza vaccine on swine
| flu:
|
| https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/51/9/1017/292207?login=.
| ..
|
| _" An outbreak investigation in British Columbia during the
| late spring of 2009 provided the first indication of an
| unexpected association between receipt of TIV and pH1N1
| illness. This led to 5 additional studies through the summer
| 2009 in Canada, each of which corroborated these initial
| findings."_
|
| The reason there's so much controversy around vaccines in
| general is that the techniques used can easily look as if
| they're working well whilst they actually don't. Mistakes are
| understandable, but the incentive is then to cover things up
| because public health officials and researchers are terrified
| of doing anything that might support "anti vaxx" narratives
| (e.g. admitting to mistakes).
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Thanks for the answer!
| dudeofea wrote:
| https://www.cdc.gov/dengue/vaccine/index.html
|
| > In children who have not already had dengue, the dengue
| vaccine increases the risk of hospitalization and severe
| illness if the child gets dengue after vaccination.
|
| The mechanism is most likely that wild-type dengue has
| optimized itself a bit to infect better when covered with
| vaccinal antibodies (antibody-dependent enhancement)
| shkkmo wrote:
| > As he explained it, the big problem is the field's dependence
| on funding from the Gates Foundation. Philanthropic funding
| isn't bad per se but the issue is that Gates specifically wants
| a legacy. That means he's not really interested in funding
| mitigation, he's only interested in eradication. A lot of
| researchers in the field think eradication isn't practical, but
| they keep their views private because you have to be gung-ho
| about eradication if you want access to the BMG Foundation
| funding stream. He said the result is a lot of grant proposals
| that are deliberately either vague or deceptive so money
| intended for eradication efforts can get spent on more useful
| stuff.
|
| Sounds like a major downside of a philathropic monopsony, which
| is a something I hadn't previously considered.
| ByThyGrace wrote:
| Either you went back to those chats in order to write this post
| down, or you have studied the matter yourself, because man
| that's a lot of detail for something your friend talked to you
| about a few years ago.
|
| I'm not being skeptic, rather saying it's actually impressive.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| He wasn't a friend, he was a guy who reached out to me
| because of stuff I'd written about COVID. We communicated
| over email and I encouraged him to write down a document with
| some of his experiences in it. The stuff in my post is a tiny
| fraction of it.
| xandrius wrote:
| I'd love to hear more about it!
| libertine wrote:
| > I found myself chatting to a guy
|
| Can you provide some reliable sources for this?
| didibus wrote:
| > Unfortunately, awareness of this problem is very low because
| anyone who points it out is immediately targeted for
| cancellation and censorship for being an "anti-vaxxer"
|
| I'm aware of it, I didn't have to go hunt it down or anything,
| if you just read on any basic vaccine info or news website they
| will teach you about vaccine imprinting, it was like all over
| the place during Covid vaccination.
|
| I'd argue, if there's anything that hurts being able to talk
| about those nuances more openly, it's the anti-vaxxers that
| jump at anything to shout demon. There's a ton of challenges,
| and issues with vaccines, or with making a car for that matter,
| there's a million ways to do it where it is harmful, deadly,
| dangerous, etc. That's almost the case for every single
| invention ever made. But the anti-vaxx just latch on, like we
| can't make anything that has risks into something that ends up
| justifying it's use because you can minimize the risks enough
| to warrant it being a net positive. Again, same as cars.
|
| What you are talking about in terms of the methodology and the
| current environment for research is not great, but in all
| honesty, it's always like this, any field of research or
| engineering, and yet somehow inventions and innovations to come
| out of them ever so often, and progress is made. If you peek
| under the cover of everything we ever invented from the past,
| it'll seem just as dirty and broken.
| JoshTko wrote:
| Really great summary and framework
| dudeofea wrote:
| > Except then some years later some assholes point out that
| mortality didn't actually drop in that targeted population. All
| that happened is the pathogen mutated to the point neither the
| test nor the immune system recognize it
|
| Seems the incentives are such that you would want to make a
| virus PCR test using a narrow range of epitopes that you were
| targeting with the vaccine. That way, if/when you get
| breakthrough infections you can just say "well I don't see any
| virus!"
|
| See bug, create unit test, fix unit test, no more bug. User
| complains bug still happens, you ignore because your unit tests
| still pass.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Yes. Well it's not an incentive issue, PCR is just incredibly
| specific when used correctly.
| wbl wrote:
| All cause morality is pretty underpowered and you should still
| see the causative agent in sequencing. I don't think what you
| are suggesting has ever happened.
| acyou wrote:
| For those interested, I would suggest checking out Spillover by
| David Quammen. It goes into detail on why eradicating/eliminating
| zoonotic diseases isn't really feasible without also eradicating
| the host populations. I stumbled onto it and read it early on
| during SARS-CoV-2, it will give you a new perspective on the
| management of disease in general.
|
| As for eradicating host populations/mosquitoes, it's not the
| greatest idea. Ecosystems are complicated and don't generally
| benefit from that sort of interference. Maybe if it's a recently
| invasive species, sure, as long as other species don't get
| inadvertently by-caught. Drastically simplifying - birds need to
| eat too, and they tried to do this style of ecosystem management
| in the past and it has had brutally adverse effects for ecosystem
| stability.
|
| I think that this is an incredible development, but also seems
| kind of destabilizing. It's hard to say without seeming or being
| callous, that it seems good now, but we need to try to predict
| outcomes far into the future. That is to say - people think they
| are smart to have done it, and yeah it's doable, but is it really
| such a great idea to throw such a series of proverbial monkey
| wrenches into our proverbial biological engines?
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _As for eradicating host populations /mosquitoes, it's not
| the greatest idea...birds need to eat too_
|
| This is a false dichotomy. Malaria is transmitted by only
| specific and very small subset of mosquitoes. There would still
| be plenty of mosquitoes if you eliminate the ones that cause
| unimaginably massive population harm.
| blastro wrote:
| False equivalency, perhaps? Big assumption that all mosquito
| sub-species affect their environment in the same way.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| We know that they share predators. We know that they share
| environments. We know that they share impact patterns. We
| also know that more than half a million people die from
| malaria every year.
| blastro wrote:
| Certainly we must be missing some factor from this
| analysis
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| It has been analyzed to death. At some point it becomes
| important to recognize that further objection on the same
| tired basis that has already been rebutted is just
| obstructionism with a willfully catastrophic cost.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > birds need to eat too
|
| There's a big difference between eliminating all mosquitoes and
| eliminating just malaria-carrying mosquito species. IIRC
| studies show that if you eliminate malaria-carrying mosquito
| species that other mosquito species very quickly take over this
| ecological niche.
| exabrial wrote:
| I don't believe mosquitoes are a keystone species in any
| ecosystem... I remember hearing this, not sure if it's true.
| zamalek wrote:
| As I understand the situation with mosquito eradication, there
| are highly specific places where mosquitos are a critical
| source of biomass (I think the Arctic tundra was one example).
| In all other places they are completely and utterly worthless.
| Blood-eating (never mind species that are parasite vectors) are
| also a tiny percentage of the overall biodiversity, the nectar
| species could easily fill the gap.
| soperj wrote:
| Female mosquitoes bite to produce eggs, male mosquitoes feed
| on nectar and pollinate plants. Some orchids can only be
| pollinated by mosquitoes.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Fair trade.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| So no one misunderstands, there are over 3000 species of
| mosquitos, but most biting species of mosquitos only go
| after birds/amphibians.
|
| Only a small number of species (single digit percentage) go
| after mammals. And even less than have been found to be
| vectors for disease.
|
| The basic point is that yes, we can wipe out selected
| mosquito species via eradication programs (like sterile
| mate release) with zero consequence outside of healthier
| people, because human hazardous mosquitos aren't unique to
| the ecological niche they fill.
| chpatrick wrote:
| The problem is that you might only find out they're important
| after you wipe them out, at which point it will be too late.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Will it be too late? We could move region by region and
| give a few years to see any changes. It's a two-way door
| that way.
| chpatrick wrote:
| I think collapsing the ecosystem of one region is already
| bad enough.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| The point is that if an ecosystem needs to be "collapsed"
| to effect beneficial change for the humans living there
| in order to not die of illnesses, then so be it. Even
| referring to removing mosquitoes as "collapse" is not
| understanding the core argument, because not all collapse
| is bad and not all preservation is good; there is no
| value judgment in saying collapse but you are adding one
| there inherently.
| chpatrick wrote:
| If the foodchain collapses it's much worse for humans
| living there than malaria.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Sure, but it's unknown whether it will or not, that is
| what is being discussed.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| What part of the food chain is foundational on mosquitos?
| These are hypotheticals not rooted in any concrete
| argument.
|
| I realize this is a dumb starting point, but ... Cows
| don't eat mosquitos, Feed corn is not pollinated by
| mosquitos, Orange groves do not require mosquitos. What,
| specifically, are we afraid of?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I mean that certainly sounds unequivocally true.
|
| But "collapse" is not what I'm saying. If you were to
| remove mosquitos in a localized region and observe the
| effects on the region's ecology, you could witness the
| problems, reintroduce the bugs, and revitalize the region
| (probably it'd recover anyway).
|
| Mosquitos are fairly localized. Their range upperbound is
| 7 miles. Some just fly 300 feet and breed around your
| house. There are plenty of ecological phenomena that are
| managed in "a few miles" ranges, like fish populations,
| forests, etc.
|
| I haven't heard a compelling reason in any of these
| threads to believe that it's actually dangerous to remove
| them from a few sq mile area.
|
| There's no reason to be absolutist about problems we can
| manage, just based on unobserved worst case solutions
| with no risk profile attached.
| equestria wrote:
| We have already thrown and will throw a lot of wrenches into
| the works. We have extensively reshaped the planet to the
| benefit of some species and the detriment of many others.
|
| It's a risk, but it's not worse than the thousands of other
| risks we've already taken. Given the absolutely insane amount
| of death and suffering caused by mosquito-borne diseases, it's
| probably also a justifiable one.
| waveBidder wrote:
| I've yet to hear a single ecologist equivocate on eliminating
| aedes aegypti, the primary vector for the worst vector borne
| diseases, and have heard many endorse the idea. Even so, things
| like Wolbachia give a means of effectively inoculating the
| vector.
| taosx wrote:
| I also endorse that, they've somehow made way in Europe. They
| are active during the day and are very aggressive.
| duskwuff wrote:
| The sheer amount of human and animal* suffering caused by
| mosquito-borne diseases speaks strongly in favor of mosquito
| eradication. Over half a million people died of malaria in
| 2022 alone, over three quarters of them children - even if
| there are ecological risks, they need to be weighed against
| allowing that suffering to continue.
|
| *: e.g. heartworm in dogs
| dietr1ch wrote:
| It's crazy that eradicating missiles would do way better.
| It could even fund vaccination against mosquito-borne
| diseases without /figuring/ around and finding out if the
| chain reaction started by killing all the mosquitoes has
| big consequences or not.
| bsimpson wrote:
| See also, Debug:
|
| https://verily.com/solutions/public-health/debug
|
| It's a Verily project that causes population collapse in
| mosquitoes like aedes aegypti by rendering the males
| infertile.
|
| > Aedes aegypti mosquitoes carry dengue, chikungunya, Zika
| and yellow fever diseases which have a large and growing
| impact on human health. They live almost exclusively in close
| association with humans, don't fly very far compared to some
| mosquito species and are particularly difficult to attack
| using traditional methods, such as pesticides and source
| reduction of breeding sites.They're also extensively studied
| in many labs around the world. We hope what we learn with the
| Aedes aegypti in the field will be helpful in developing new
| ways of tackling other mosquitoes and the diseases they
| transmit.
| yapyap wrote:
| Irony
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Wait until the anti-vaxxers hear about this. The anti-mosquito
| movement is gonna be wild. "The government is controlling
| bugs!!!"
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| The concept and rumination over delivering bio-weapons in
| similar fashion is not unheard of.
|
| Just the top of my head - Unit 731 plague-infested fleas and
| "Operation Cherry Blossoms" in Japan, Operation Big Buzz"
| (1955) and "Operation Drop Kick" (1956), "Biopreparat" (1974)
| in the USSR, and history of chucking plague-infected corpses
| (flying dead cows anyone?) in siege warfare.
| wizrrd wrote:
| And what happens if a genetically modified parasite mutates again
| in the wild?
| pcdoodle wrote:
| It's sad to see the censorship of opposing viewpoints on HN.
|
| Regarding the topic at hand: IMO we should not go down this path,
| it seems really really stupid.
| jaekwon wrote:
| hey buddy, you're not alone.
|
| the problem comes from the fact that this community, and
| silicon valley in general, is targeted for woke propaganda.
| obviously this is an important community, so obviously those
| with power and capital will seek to control it.
|
| in a large part the problem is silicon valley itself, and in
| particular Stanford and the surrounding area.
|
| don't be sad. get mad.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| What exactly was censored?
| greenleafone7 wrote:
| There is re**ed and then there is this!
| major505 wrote:
| I could not read the whole article because It wanted me to create
| a account, but it seens very Unethical, inoculating people
| without their knowledge... .
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| Informed consent is an essential pre-condition to providing
| immunization.
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