Indian Scientists Develop Vaccine for Bird Flu

William Robinson writes "Indian Scientists have succeeded in developing a vaccine against the bird flu disease that has affected poultry business in many parts of the world. This was formally announced, and ICAR Director-General Mangala Rai described this as a big step forward in tackling the highly pathogenic avian influenza, commonly called the bird flu. Indonesia, who has recently reported their 42nd victim of bird flu, will now have one less thing to worry about."

Birds or Humans ?

[JohnHegarty]

As the comment on the pages says... is this for the birds or humans ?

Re:Did you even read the article?

[minus_273]

i wonder if this is an announcemnet of a generic copy. Indians usually leave the Rnd to other companies then use that research to make generic copies of drugs. That way they do not need to invest money in developing the drug, just copying it. This allows them to charge much less for the drug and still make money because there were almost no costs in developing it. Sucks for the company that did the Rnd though.

How Effective is It?

[giafly]

Until we know how well it works - and I can't find any information linked to today's news - it's too soon to say "one less thing to worry about."

BTW: Didn't Hungarian Scientists do this in 2005? "Hungary's health minister says a bird flu vaccine appears to be effective in early tests. The vaccine works against H5N1 Hungary's health minister says a bird flu vaccine appears to be effective in early tests. The trial jab appears to protect humans and animals against the lethal H5N1 virus, preliminary results show." - BBC 19 October 2005 [bbc.co.uk]

In Relelated News

[Anonymous Coward]

US Pharmas have developed a suite of drugs to control the symptoms of the flu. They immediately opened talks with both Congress and the administration to pressure India to prevent deployment of their vaccine. "Implementation of the Indian solution would not be in the best interests of the US or the world," said a Pharma spokesperson.

Is there a +5 Cynical?

Re:this is what no ip does...

[ShadowFlyP]

I don't know which choir you think you're preaching to, but it is not the majority of the Slashdot crowd.

Many of us may not agree with the current implementation of some IP protections (software patents especially), but I think there are very few of us that would be for the abolishment of IP enforcement. If you truely think about it, it is only with IP enforcment that software licenses such as the GPL can work. Without IP rights, anyone would be able to take all of the GPL licensed code and integrate it into closed source applications without any contribution back to the community. Only through IP enforcement can we prevent the "embrace and extend" philosopy that leads to proprietarity.

Offiicial Press Release Link

[jgercken]

Official Press Release at: http://www.icar.org.in/pr/16072006.htm [icar.org.in]

Re:Excellent!

[AK Marc]

The cover of Sunday's New York Times had a picture of 16 dead Lebanese, which were mostly children. Business as usual?

Yes, that is business as usual. The terrorists in Lebanon go to areas filled with civilians, shoot things at Israel, then run. Israel shoots back where the terrorists shot from, and the Terrorists succeed in their real goal - getting their own people killed by Israel. The People in Lebanon acting in a manner intended to kill Lebanese is business as usual. That they happened to be children was just a bonus for them.

Re:Excellent!

[Grishnakh]

Or maybe Hezbollah really does represent the country, at least the south? Kinda like Hamas really does represent Palestine? The inconvenient truth may be that you may not actually like your neighbor's governments, but you still have to learn to get along.

Maybe they do represent the south, but no, they don't have to learn to get along: Hezbollah's stated aim is the destruction of Israel. How the heck do you "get along" with someone when they've sworn to destroy you? The answer is you don't: you destroy them first. If that means destroying most of Lebanon, then so be it.

Personally, I think the mideast is overdue for a very big and bloody conflict. On one hand, we have Israel that just wants to do their thing and stop getting harassed. They've taken crappy desert land and turned it into an oasis and a serious economic power. On the other hand, we have a bunch of Islamic nuts that have nothing better to do than terrorize Israel because they can't tolerate any non-Islamic countries in their midst. They've had plenty of time to build advanced nations in the same geographic area as Israel, but what have they accomplished? Nothing. Even worse, this conflict isn't about some radical guerillas, with innocent people caught in the middle. The people have actually elected these guerillas (Hamas and Hezbollah) to their governments, so that means the people actually back these groups' stated intentions of terrorism and destruction of Israel. Therefore, the people in these countries are perfectly acceptable targets for attack and destruction.