Ebola


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My Father in his old age had several operations. I always gave him a milkshake cocktail laced with muti-vitamins before the operations and as soon as I could after I continued with vitamin C. He never had any negative neurological consequences unlike several other elderly surgical patients I have known about, one of whom spent all the rest of his life in a nursing home finally dying with multiple bed sores.

The reason my Father didn't get vitamin C the right way--intravenously--is doctors' medical ignorance and conservatism. Any patient fighting for his life in a hospital because of an infection should get ascorbate acid in the IV drip whether it's bacterial or viral as the body needs C to deal with the stress it's under. If my health is normal I can tolerate 8 - 10 grams before the diarrhea kicks in. If I have a cold I can take 20-25 grams. (I don't have luck curing a cold once the symptoms take hold.)

I generally avoid continuous multi-vitamin regimens. More than one to two grams of vitamin C a day is likely not so good for you as it generates free radicals and could feed incipient cancers. But when I suspect a cold coming on, I start gulping them down. It's been a while that I've had to suffer through one.

Ebola appears to kill half the patients treated. It seems to me vitamin C intravenously could give them the strength to survive. If I'm right and they were so treated and the survival rate went up to 80 to 95% it would revolutionize the use of C in medicine and stop what is looking more and more like a pandemic coming right at whole countries.

--Brant

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Who really knows? On Doctor Oz today he was saying Cranberry Juice was for after symptoms of a urinary tract infection occur but as a preventive drink one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in three drops of water or drink prune juice everyday is good to make your urine more acidic. I don't think vitamins do much in pill form and vitamin E can cause a minor cancer to spread.

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Who really knows? On Doctor Oz today he was saying Cranberry Juice was for after symptoms of a urinary tract infection occur but as a preventive drink one tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in three drops of water or drink prune juice everyday is good to make your urine more acidic. I don't think vitamins do much in pill form and vitamin E can cause a minor cancer to spread.

Who really knows what?

--Brant

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"Always store beer in a cold dark place."

-Lazarus Long

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My Father in his old age had several operations. I always gave him a milkshake cocktail laced with muti-vitamins before the operations and as soon as I could after I continued with vitamin C. He never had any negative neurological consequences unlike several other elderly surgical patients I have known about, one of whom spent all the rest of his life in a nursing home finally dying with multiple bed sores.

The reason my Father didn't get vitamin C the right way--intravenously--is doctors' medical ignorance and conservatism. Any patient fighting for his life in a hospital because of an infection should get ascorbate acid in the IV drip whether it's bacterial or viral as the body needs C to deal with the stress it's under. If my health is normal I can tolerate 8 - 10 grams before the diarrhea kicks in. If I have a cold I can take 20-25 grams. (I don't have luck curing a cold once the symptoms take hold.)

I generally avoid continuous multi-vitamin regimens. More than one to two grams of vitamin C a day is likely not so good for you as it generates free radicals and could feed incipient cancers. But when I suspect a cold coming on, I start gulping them down. It's been a while that I've had to suffer through one.

Ebola appears to kill half the patients treated. It seems to me vitamin C intravenously could give them the strength to survive. If I'm right and they were so treated and the survival rate went up to 80 to 95% it would revolutionize the use of C in medicine and stop what is looking more and more like a pandemic coming right at whole countries.

--Brant

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There has not been a vaccine created because there wasn't any money in it. As long as it was an African problem no one cared.

Now that it has hit America there is a mad scramble to find a cure? It has been around since 1976(ish) not like they have not had any time..

Viruses morph obsoleting vaccines. One reason I don't bother with flu shots, but not the most important one.

--Brant

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Viruses morph obsoleting vaccines. One reason I don't bother with flu shots, but not the most important one.

Lots of fine reasons to avoid a flu shot (I get jabbed because otherwise I cannot volunteer at the care home with demented elderly). It hurts. It's expensive. I don't think it works. I don't mind getting influenza. I never get influenza anyway ... I haven't been out of the house in five years.

But the notion that mutating (morphing) viruses make obsolete vaccines against infection -- it's only a partial truth. Though flu viruses mutate, it's not like immunology and virology has been ignorant of this -- understanding flu virus mutations is key to each season's flu vaccinations. (the partial truth about flu vaccines needing to keep pace with mutating virus does not extend fully to other vaccines like those against measles/rubella/mumps, whooping cough, polio, smallpox, meningitis and so on ...)

As for why a vaccine has not been forthcoming for Ebola, have a gander, Jules and Brant, at the Vaccines section of the Wikipedia entry on Ebola. Human vaccines are in the last stretch of the multi-year process of vaccine creation and testing.

Put the attempts to invent a safe and effective vaccine against Ebola against the attempts to find a vaccine against HIV infection. Sometime even the most massively funded and directed attempts do not bear fruit in what we think is a timely manner. It's too late for this year's epidemic, but the first Ebola vaccine from big pharma GlaxoSmithKline could be out in 2015.

There are several vaccine trials under way. The Public Health Agency in Canada has started human testing, and a Russian project is planning to do the same.

At GSK's vaccine research laboratories outside Brussels, they are trying to compress trials that would normally take up to 10 years into just 12 months.

They have already given the vaccine to volunteers taking part in the trial in Africa, the US - where they are working alongside the National Institute of Health - and the UK.

A good recent Vox story on Ebola vaccine puts it plainly: "Vaccine research is unpredictable" ...

drug_approval_revised2.0.0.png

Edited by william.scherk
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William:

Does Canada have a similar movement or law like Prop 303 which is up for a vote this November?

http://www.azfamily.com/news/election/Understanding-Prop-303--Right-To-Try-or-False-Hope-Initiative-278275021.html

Vote 2014
Understanding Prop 303 : Right To Try or False Hope Initiative?

by Sybil Hoffman

azfamily.com

Posted on October 6, 2014 at 7:02 PM

PHOENIX -- Colorado, Michigan and New Jersey have already turned their backs on the Food and Drug Administration by using experimental drugs to save dying patients. Will Arizona be next?

Supporters of Proposition 303 known as the “Right To Try” initiative hope so. However opponents say this issue is extremely complex. In fact, they believe it should be called the “False Hope” initiative.

Within a week, Diego Morris went from being an active 11-year-old athlete to a patient fighting bone cancer. "We thought at first it was probably just another sports injury," his mom Paulina says they initially thought.

The diagnosis was beyond devastating. Then came the news the drug that was showing promise to help Diego wasn’t FDA approved.

Diego’s dad, Jason Morris, remember how he felt. "Beyond frustrating," he says. "Part of it is the panic of knowing that something you need that is lifesaving isn't available for your child."

The Morris family moved to England to get the drug that doctors in the U.S. couldn’t prescribe. So now they are hopeful Arizona voters will pass Proposition 303.

As Jason Morris points out: "It's a no-brainer for us."

The measure promises to give terminally ill patients in Arizona the green light to bypass the FDA in hopes of gaining access to certain drugs.

"When you have a life-threatening situation like this, to offer a drug that has potential, it's hard to argue against it," says Jason Morris.

That is, unless you’re Joan Koerber-Walker, who is the President and CEO of the Arizona Bio-Industry Association. "The right to try does not give patients the ability to succeed and that's a real shame that we have something like that on Arizona's ballot," she says.

Koerber-Walker says Proposition 303 is cruel because it gives families false hope. "This bill does not provide for any payment for the associated hospital bills, the drug itself, or the physicians' care," she says. "And because you're going down an experimental pathway, your insurance doesn't have to cover it."

But what’s more troubling for Koerber-Walker is the potential of jeopardizing research. "It could delay, not only the ability for that clinical trial to pass, it could also create a situation where hundreds if not thousands of patients would not have the benefit of that drug."

Koerber-Walker contends when patients like Diego take experimental drugs, it skews FDA research. Diego's parents say saving their son’s life was more important.

"The physician who led the trial on this drug, the trials, said but you're not going to have concrete evidence that this was the drug, this was the part of treatment that saved Diego's life," says his mom, Paulina. "We said, we don't care; doesn't matter. We don't need proof; our proof is that he is alive."

While no one disagrees Diego deserves to live, Koerber-Walker wonders, why doesn’t everyone? "Prop 303 goes around every expert that is involved in both the clinical trials process as well as in patient care, and tries to work around the process because they don't like reality."
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William:

Does Canada have a similar movement or law like Prop 303 which is up for a vote this November?

http://www.azfamily.com/news/election/Understanding-Prop-303--Right-To-Try-or-False-Hope-Initiative-278275021.html

Canada is just about as tight-ass as anywhere with allowing doctors to prescribe medication that hasn't at least gone through phase one trials.

The CBC show The Current did a good show on the issues in Canada. That article you pasted underlined one risk of un-tightening access -- a proliferation of crank cocktails and quack remedies. As long as some clinic in Tijuana could tout 'human trial' results of a given agent's utility, new rules could mandate customer choice for off-label/pre-trial use of almost any kind of remedy. I can imagine a lot of wasted resources and delay and death under that kind of looser regime; if it brings more woo into cancer clinics, I won't like it. I empathize with the particular terminal patients and their families. I'd hate to think that we deny plausible remedies just because they haven't been proven in human trials, or are at a very early stage in the process; I'd worry about the fringey-plausible remedies currently touted in alternative health markets. it could drive out the good.

I can a see a bad law applied to no particular advantage of anyone except the nostrum producers.

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Drug trials can be discounted save for phase 3 results.

The real issue is States throwing off Federal authority. The United States is beginning to break apart and it's not going to be just States taking back Constitutional powers abrogated by the Feds over the decades. The inclusive idea of what it means to be an American is developing serious fault lines--a cultural Balkanization.

--Brant

the slo-mo fracturing will go on for decades if not spiked by a more general, positive and benign vision--or outright disaster

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Adam asked how the South African government is dealing with Ebola. I'm not sure this government or its tattered public health system has any policy. Public hospitals can hardly deal with what patients they have. So, as usual it's a matter of denial until it is too late. An S.A. traveller from Tanzania (East Africa) yesterday reported on Facebook that she was health checked on leaving Tanzania, but when entering the airport this side, was confronted with a table carrying official forms, but nobody in attendance.

Obviously the worry is whether any sufferers have already entered SA, undetected, in past weeks or months. By this stage the spread would be barely controllable by this dysfunctional State, which is too inefficient and corrupt to even practise the Social Welfarism it touts, properly.

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Thanks for Williams and everyone else's medical information. Unfortunately, I foresee nurses (rightfully?) going on strike. The only people who will care for Ebola patients will be others all ready stricken with or recovering from the disease, or loved ones.

We have had a few cases of Ebola enter the U.S. and we cant handle the situation now, even with our affluence, supposedly advanced medical system, and superior government. The experts liken it to AIDS but it has begun to spread very quickly. I suppose contact can cause AIDS or Ebola but Ebola is another potential *black death* catastrophe and AIDS is not (except for casually stupid, criminal, or irrational people.) All those people who have been near the recent victims like the people on the plane and everyone they have come into contact with are at risk.

First the Center for Disease Control said Ebola could only be caught by sexual contact, handling the vomit, bodily fluids or fecal matter of someone exhibiting symptoms but now they say touch, and saliva which can be ejected in a sneeze can transfer the virus. The CDC has shown incompetence. And now with the appointment of an Ebola Czar who has no medical background and reports to Homeland Security and Susan Rice (a political flack) and not directly to the President illustrates that this is foremost-ly, a political problem to our President Barrack Ebola.

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Thanks for Williams and everyone else's medical information. Unfortunately, I foresee nurses (rightfully?) going on strike. The only people who will care for Ebola patients will be others all ready stricken with or recovering from the disease, or loved ones.

We have had a few cases of Ebola enter the U.S. and we cant handle the situation now, even with our affluence, supposedly advanced medical system, and superior government. The experts liken it to AIDS but it has begun to spread very quickly. I suppose contact can cause AIDS or Ebola but Ebola is another potential *black death* catastrophe and AIDS is not (except for casually stupid, criminal, or irrational people.) All those people who have been near the recent victims like the people on the plane and everyone they have come into contact with are at risk.

First the Center for Disease Control said Ebola could only be caught by sexual contact, handling the vomit, bodily fluids or fecal matter of someone exhibiting symptoms but now they say touch, and saliva which can be ejected in a sneeze can transfer the virus. The CDC has shown incompetence. And now with the appointment of an Ebola Czar who has no medical background and reports to Homeland Security and Susan Rice (a political flack) and not directly to the President illustrates that this is foremost-ly, a political problem to our President Barrack Ebola.

Please see this: http://www.webmd.com/news/20140806/ebola-virus-how-contagious

Ebola is nowhere as contagious as was smallpox and the Spanish Flu which killed nearly 50 million in less than five years.

The problem at this moment is we do not have a cure and we do not have a vaccine. Now that the disease has come home to plague us (sic!) perhaps our people will get busy on these matters.

In any case we do not have the "next black death" as was promised with SARS, the bird flu and the swine flu.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Adam asked how the South African government is dealing with Ebola. I'm not sure this government or its tattered public health system has any policy. Public hospitals can hardly deal with what patients they have. So, as usual it's a matter of denial until it is too late. An S.A. traveller from Tanzania (East Africa) yesterday reported on Facebook that she was health checked on leaving Tanzania, but when entering the airport this side, was confronted with a table carrying official forms, but nobody in attendance.

Obviously the worry is whether any sufferers have already entered SA, undetected, in past weeks or months. By this stage the spread would be barely controllable by this dysfunctional State, which is too inefficient and corrupt to even practise the Social Welfarism it touts, properly.

With the depressing reality of AIDS in South Africa, and the history of denialism and public health failures through the eighties and nineties of the last century, maybe you are right to expect an outbreak down there -- due to no plan, no resources, no action.

I've read some news of the plans and structures said to be in place. If you were more hopeful on the subject, this could be reassuring.

(do you recall any details of the Facebook lady's story, like which SA airport she flew into? Do the SA authorities heat-screen only direct flights from the three countries with epidemics, as far as you know?)

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Thanks for Williams and everyone else's medical information. Unfortunately, I foresee nurses (rightfully?) going on strike. The only people who will care for Ebola patients will be others all ready stricken with or recovering from the disease, or loved ones.

We have had a few cases of Ebola enter the U.S. and we cant handle the situation now, even with our affluence, supposedly advanced medical system, and superior government. The experts liken it to AIDS but it has begun to spread very quickly. I suppose contact can cause AIDS or Ebola but Ebola is another potential *black death* catastrophe and AIDS is not (except for casually stupid, criminal, or irrational people.) All those people who have been near the recent victims like the people on the plane and everyone they have come into contact with are at risk.

First the Center for Disease Control said Ebola could only be caught by sexual contact, handling the vomit, bodily fluids or fecal matter of someone exhibiting symptoms but now they say touch, and saliva which can be ejected in a sneeze can transfer the virus. The CDC has shown incompetence. And now with the appointment of an Ebola Czar who has no medical background and reports to Homeland Security and Susan Rice (a political flack) and not directly to the President illustrates that this is foremost-ly, a political problem to our President Barrack Ebola.

Please see this: http://www.webmd.com/news/20140806/ebola-virus-how-contagious

Ebola is nowhere as contagious as was smallpox and the Spanish Flu which killed nearly 50 million in less than five years.

The problem at this moment is we do not have a cure and we do not have a vaccine. Now that the disease has come home to plague us (sic!) perhaps our people will get busy on these matters.

In any case we do not have the "next black death" as was promised with SARS, the bird flu and the swine flu.

Ba'al Chatzaf

How contagious is yet to be determined.

--Brant

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How contagious is yet to be determined.

--Brant

The fact that entire populations have not been wiped out in Africa suggests the the disease is not as contagious as the "air borne" disease spread by infected droplets discharged by sneezing, coughing or spitting. The disease is transmitted mostly by skin to skin contact, apparently.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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How contagious is yet to be determined.

--Brant

The fact that entire populations have not been wiped out in Africa suggests the the disease is not as contagious as the "air borne" disease spread by infected droplets discharged by sneezing, coughing or spitting. The disease is transmitted mostly by skin to skin contact, apparently.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Suggests. A probability only, so far.

--Brant

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Is there a possibility, or, a probability of an asymptomatic carrier of Ebola similar to Mary Mallon, aka Mary Brown[Typhoid Mary]?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoid_Mary

220px-Mallon-Mary_01.jpg

An asymptomatic carrier (healthy carrier or just carrier) is a person or other organism that has contracted an infectious disease, but who displays no symptoms. Although unaffected by the disease themselves, carriers can transmit it to others.[1]

In humans, HIV goes through a long latency period, during which the host is asymptomatic.[2] Many carriers are infected with persistent viruses such as EBV and Cytomegalovirus that only rarely progress to a disease state. Herpes simplex viral infection may also be asymptomatic and can be spread without the originally infected person realising they are infected.[3]

A...

under the picture above, the wiki asks you to notice that she is adding poison in the form of skulls to the meal ...

she was a cook.

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Adam asked how the South African government is dealing with Ebola. I'm not sure this government or its tattered public health system has any policy. Public hospitals can hardly deal with what patients they have. So, as usual it's a matter of denial until it is too late. An S.A. traveller from Tanzania (East Africa) yesterday reported on Facebook that she was health checked on leaving Tanzania, but when entering the airport this side, was confronted with a table carrying official forms, but nobody in attendance.

Obviously the worry is whether any sufferers have already entered SA, undetected, in past weeks or months. By this stage the spread would be barely controllable by this dysfunctional State, which is too inefficient and corrupt to even practise the Social Welfarism it touts, properly.

With the depressing reality of AIDS in South Africa, and the history of denialism and public health failures through the eighties and nineties of the last century, maybe you are right to expect an outbreak down there -- due to no plan, no resources, no action.

I've read some news of the plans and structures said to be in place. If you were more hopeful on the subject, this could be reassuring.

(do you recall any details of the Facebook lady's story, like which SA airport she flew into? Do the SA authorities heat-screen only direct flights from the three countries with epidemics, as far as you know?)

Quoted from Zelda La Grange's FB Page: "You land in Maputo, they take your temperature by holding a gadget against your forehead as you go through immigration. You land back in Joburg and there is NO testing, checking, NOTHING. Two tables with health questionaires lying around but no one managing it. WAKE UP SOUTH AFRICA."

So it was Mocambique not Tanzania, as I heard it. This was objected to by someone writing that indeed there are "infra red thermal scans" out of sight of the people queueing. So, I don't know. But the response has still been painfully slow, to my mind, given that Johannesburg is a major travel hub for African countries.

This is the same Zelda who tended to Nelson Mandela: a conservative Afrikaner lass, starting as a low-ranked PA at his Presidential offices. He took to her, and she eventually ended up his assistant, close friend and confidante, living at his home with Graca Machel, caring for him until his death. (On this trip, she had been visiting Graca in Maputo). She's just published a book "Good Morning, Mr. President".

Quite a woman - and their affectionate 20 year relationship was quite an inspiration for SA, but those were other, optimistic times, all due to another calibre of man and leader.

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This is the same Zelda who tended to Nelson Mandela: a conservative Afrikaner lass, starting as a low-ranked PA at his Presidential offices. He took to her, and she eventually ended up his assistant, close friend and confidante, living at his home with Graca Machel, caring for him until his death. (On this trip, she had been visiting Graca in Maputo). She's just published a book "Good Morning, Mr. President".

Quite a woman - and their affectionate 20 year relationship was quite an inspiration for SA, but those were other, optimistic times, all due to another calibre of man and leader.

Place him next to the Commander of Cliché Chief we have here.

I must admit that if this temporary "President" of the United States were Italian, I would be completely embarrassed to share a common genetic linkage with him.

Thanks for the info Tony.

A...

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This is the same Zelda who tended to Nelson Mandela: a conservative Afrikaner lass, starting as a low-ranked PA at his Presidential offices. He took to her, and she eventually ended up his assistant, close friend and confidante, living at his home with Graca Machel, caring for him until his death. (On this trip, she had been visiting Graca in Maputo). She's just published a book "Good Morning, Mr. President".

Quite a woman - and their affectionate 20 year relationship was quite an inspiration for SA, but those were other, optimistic times, all due to another calibre of man and leader.

Place him next to the Commander of Cliché Chief we have here.

I must admit that if this temporary "President" of the United States were Italian, I would be completely embarrassed to share a common genetic linkage with him.

Thanks for the info Tony.

A...

Obviously you've forgotten about Adam (not you) and Eve.

--Brant

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There has not been a vaccine created because there wasn't any money in it. As long as it was an African problem no one cared.

Now that it has hit America there is a mad scramble to find a cure? It has been around since 1976(ish) not like they have not had any time..

In 1976 we do not have a dawg in the hunt or a hoss in the race. People deal mostly with what affects them closely and immediately.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Suggests. A probability only, so far.

--Brant

When dealing with a relatively unfamiliar disease everything is a probability.

Fortunately we have some legal precedents which will enable us to take whatever emergency measures we must. The treatment of "Typhoid Mary" established the legal power of the government to impose quarantines where the doctors and managers decided it was necessary for public safety. We don't have to write our legal regulations on a blank sheet.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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