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Medical Forum / General / General / January 2006Why No H5N1 Vaccine?
Vaccine manufacturers have been making killed or attenuated vaccines from a wide spectrum of flu viruses, and they've been doing it for 35 years or more. The technology is clearly completely mature, so it should be straightforward to simply apply their known techniques for manufacturing flu vaccines to H5N1, thus defeating the pandemic problem before it strikes. Is there something unique about this particular strain that makes it unsuitable for the application of existing techniques? Per Jay Stallworth: > Is there something unique about this particular strain that makes >it unsuitable for the application of existing techniques? Three problems that I have heard about: 1) Since the virus has not mutated to efficient human-to-human transmisability (is that even a word..?.-) the exact strain upon which to base a vaccine is not available. 2) Flu vaccines have traditionally been manufactured by inoculating fertilized chicken eggs, letting the stuff grow for awhile on the chick embryo, and then harvesting the contents which is refined into vaccine. H5N1, however, is so lethal that it kills the chick embryo too soon - making the amount of vaccine per egg much less or zero. 3) Vaccines are not money makers for the manufacturers. Money losers, in fact much of the time. So far, our government has not seen fit to exercise any of it's power to remedy this situation. Consequently, vaccine production facilities are substantially below what is actually needed and our surge capacity is nil.  SignaturePeteCresswell > Per Jay Stallworth: >> Is there something unique about this particular strain that makes [quoted text clipped - 25 lines] > facilities are substantially below what is actually needed and our surge > capacity is nil. All good points, particularly #3. The return on vaccine manufacturing doesn't justify doing it especially given the liability it exposes the manufacturer to. HMc "(PeteCresswell)" <x@y.Invalid> wrote in > Per Jay Stallworth: >> Is there something unique about this particular strain that makes [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > transmisability (is that even a word..?.-) the exact strain upon which > to base a vaccine is not available. Isn't half a loaf better than none? > 2) Flu vaccines have traditionally been manufactured by inoculating > fertilized chicken eggs, letting the stuff grow for awhile on the > chick embryo, and then harvesting the contents which is refined into > vaccine. H5N1, however, is so lethal that it kills the chick embryo > too soon - making the amount of vaccine per egg much less or zero. Aren't the attenuated strains less lethal? > 3) Vaccines are not money makers for the manufacturers. Money > losers, in fact much of the time. So far, our government has not > seen fit to exercise any of it's power to remedy this situation. > Consequently, vaccine production facilities are substantially below > what is actually needed and our surge capacity is nil. Doesn't Dubya want to throw money at the problem? Jay Stallworth <jstall860@aol.com.nospam> wrote in part: >Doesn't Dubya want to throw money at the problem? He's already thrown it all away. -- Jim Chinnis Warrenton, Virginia, USA > Jay Stallworth <jstall860@aol.com.nospam> wrote in part: > >>Doesn't Dubya want to throw money at the problem? > > He's already thrown it all away. As the Deficit Spender in Chief, his financial resources are limitless. > Vaccine manufacturers have been making killed or attenuated vaccines from a > wide spectrum of flu viruses, and they've been doing it for 35 years or [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > strikes. Is there something unique about this particular strain that makes > it unsuitable for the application of existing techniques? The human to human mutation AND the spread to a statistically significant number of humans, not just isolated case(s), has to happen before you can START, AND NOT BEFORE. Its a complete waste of time and money to start before that event happens. After that, its going to be a race to the finish and that could take months or even a year, or more. Per Gary: >has to happen before you can >START, AND NOT BEFORE. Its a complete waste of time and money to start >before that event happens. After that, its going to be a race to the finish >and that could take months or even a year, or more. From what I've read so far about vaccine production/surge capacity, "or more" is the applicable phrase. Also, historically it seems like each wave lasts about 3 months. That suggests to me that we'll have the first and maybe second waves with no vaccine protection whatsoever. SignaturePeteCresswell > Also, historically it seems like each wave lasts about 3 months. That suggests > to me that we'll have the first and maybe second waves with no vaccine > protection whatsoever. I believe that we need to streamline the process that creates the real vaccines, not the generic ones. The fruits of the Genome project paying dividends on the millions invested. But that will be more of a management problem than a physical one, IMHO. >> Vaccine manufacturers have been making killed or attenuated vaccines >> from a [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > a race to the finish and that could take months or even a year, or > more. The answers to some simple questions WILL verify your statement that the disease must break out strongly before it makes any SENSE TO GET A JUMP on manufacture. How many antigens (surface and other) are coded in H5N1, how many genes does it have and how many antigens are involved in human-to-human transmission? |
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