Posted on 09/10/2014 3:49:02 PM PDT by Qiviut
Last week, as experts assembled at the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva to discuss the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, there was a glaring absence in the public discourse: an accurate assessment of the U.S. government’s capacity to produce ZMapp, one of the experimental drugs under discussion for speeded approval. The drug, a cocktail of three monoclonal antibodies that has now been used in the treatment of at least seven Ebola patients, five of whom survived, has the potential to be an exceptional therapy against the virus. But the world’s supply is currently exhausted, and production of even several dozen additional doses of the drug remains months away.
But the U.S. government could in fact produce an extraordinary amount of the drug in a relatively short timeframe. A Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program, launched in 2006 and led by Michael Callahan, an infectious disease doctor affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital, wildly accelerated the rate at which vaccines and monoclonal antibodies like ZMapp can be produced. Callahan’s project was known as AMP, for Accelerated Manufacture of Pharmaceuticals, and, later, as Blue Angel. It pitted small biotech firms against one another, each competing to produce therapeutic agents in creative and relatively untested ways ....... Tobacco plants eventually proved to be the most effective means of production.
The president of one of the premier AMP/Blue Angel platforms, speaking on the condition of anonymity last week, told me that his firm could produce tens of thousands of doses of ZMapp within months and 3 million doses of the ZMapp within a year.
Yet, five months into the outbreak, the sort of political will required for such aggressive intervention still remains entirely absent in the leadership of the world’s most affluent states, not least of which, within the U.S. government.
(Excerpt) Read more at newrepublic.com ...
Bring Out Your Dead
Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.
The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.
So far the false positive rate is 100%.
At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.
*sigh* Such is life, and death...
Interesting. Thanks for posting.
Health/life BUMP!
This morning I spoke with a very responsible & knowledgeable person closely involved with the fight against Ebola in West Africa.
400 died YESTERDAY.
Millions more at risk in Ebola outbreak, British study finds
Ebola is ‘devouring everything in its path.’ Could it lead to Liberia’s collapse?
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