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Indian Scientists Develop Vaccine for Bird Flu 145

Posted by Zonk from the smart-folks dept.
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."
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Indian Scientists Develop Vaccine for Bird Flu More

Indian Scientists Develop Vaccine for Bird Flu

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  • Excellent! (Score:4, Funny)

    by rpjs ( 126615 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:05AM (#15730389)
    No need to worry about bird flu any more, just the incipient WWIII brewing in the Middle East...

    • Re:Excellent! (Score:3, Funny)

      by tgd ( 2822 )
      Thankfully Isrealis, Palestinians, and Lebanese don't tend to fly migratory patterns that cross New Hampshire.

      Mass pandemic scares me more than $100 oil, even with a 10mpg car and a 15mpg truck.

      Barely, though. I had to fill the car up this morning!
      • >a 10mpg car and a 15mpg truck.
        What kind of car does that sort of mileage? i thought they pretty much all managed 30-50mpg these days? Heck, even my crummy Ford Focus does about 45mpg on a long run.
        • I was shocked when I looked for my last car about 6 months ago. most sedans I looked at leasing got around 20-24 MPG highway and 18-22 city.

          there seemed to be huge variation - some were mid 30- and higher, but it was not the rule, the exception. -- I"m not an expert, and I wan't making the choice based on milage. After looking, I was surprised at how low the numbers were.

          I wish I had my motorcycle still, where 50+ was the norm, but people would need to accept riding gear in professional sales meetings,
        • I drive a focus, and only avg about 30mpg, mostly highway. How the hell do you get 45mpg???????? Please let us in on the secret!!! (yes, gas is $3.15 around here!!!)
        • Actually for trucks and SUVs, that's pretty standard MPG ratings. Their heavier, thus require more power (gas) to move them.
        • Depends on what and how you drive. A 60's muscle car with a 400ci engine wont get poo for mileage, and any car will have bad mileage if you floor it all the time.
        • First generation Porsche 911 with a race configuration engine running a little on the rich side and a power curve that necessitates keeping it above 4500rpm. 10mpg is optimistic... thats when I'm just putzing around.

          Cost me $10 to drive to work today.

          And was SO worth it.

    • Re:Excellent! (Score:2, Informative)

      by utnapistim ( 931738 )

      No need to worry about bird flu any more, just the incipient WWIII brewing in the Middle East...

      Ummm ... no, not really, at least not for Israel. I've been in Tel Aviv for two months now, and it's - for lack of a better term - "business as usual".

      If it was by what you get on CNN, I'd have expected to crawl under debris by now; In truth, life goes on unaffected in 90% of the country, but that's nothing sensational, so it won't probably appear on the news.

      • Re:Excellent! (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Instine ( 963303 )
        Mod up informative /\

        The worry comes from how the rest of the world reacts to this (and of course the worry in the effected area is very real and worth noting!). If Syria, and Iran, and Afghanistan can coerce Pakistan (or some other sizable ally) then World War is not far away. This was unlikely before. But after questionable actsperformedin the area, committed by Israeli allies, this is more likely. If Pakistan were to 'join in' then it means two opposing aggressors have Nuclear 'deterrents'.

        As for
      • Honestly though, the news only reports on stuff they know viewers will watch. Would you watch news about zero attacks in some part of Tel Aviv? Here in Florida millions of people don't get attacked by aligators, so should the news report about those people instead of the people who did get attacked? That's why I can't stand watching the news, it just dumps all this depressing stuff in your lap and at the end they bid you good night. ps - thumbs up on the bird flu vacine

      • Re:Excellent! (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by Scarblac ( 122480 )

        But how's life in Beirut? Business as usual too?

        • Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Informative)

          by Erwos ( 553607 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @09:43AM (#15731313)
          At the risk of igniting a real flame war, life in Beirut is never really business as usual, because the central government there doesn't have real power over their entire country. They've been occupied by the Israelis and the Syrians over the years, and even once the Syrians and Israelis were gone, they couldn't figure out how to get Hezbollah under control. Lebanon is a country I generally sympathize with - they've gotten screwed by a number of parties in the region and outside of it, and once they get their domestic situation under control, they'll probably be a stabilizing influence in the region.

          I do agree with your implication towards the poster who somewhat blithely replied that Tel Aviv was doing OK. For one thing, a good bit of northern Israel isn't doing so hot (witness the shelling of Haifa), and it's a bit crass of him to ignore his own countrymen. Second, the folks in Beirut generally don't want this conflict - they were dragged into it by Hezbollah in the south. Maybe once the Israelis decimate Hezbollah, they can take some real control of their country. Well, here's hoping...

          Anyways, back on topic: the Middle East does have substantial interests in poultry, since religious Muslims and Jews don't eat pork. This kind of a vaccine is quite helpful in protecting their flocks and themselves - and that's one less thing they all have to worry about in these troubled times.

          -Erwos

          • Re:Excellent! (Score:2, Insightful)

            by hotsauce ( 514237 )

            Maybe once the Israelis decimate Hezbollah, they can take some real control of their country.

            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. Decimating them doesn't change how your neighbors feel. In any case, Israel hasn't been able to decimate them in almost 20 years despite their best efforts, wh

            • Re:Excellent! (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Erwos ( 553607 )
              They may or may not represent the feelings of the Lebanese people in the south - but they are _not_ an official agency of the Lebanese government, and are thus not recognized internationally as being representative of the internationally-recognized Lebanese government.

              The reason they may be able to decimate them now is that their foolish, unprovoked declaration of war on Israel may have finally lost them the popular support that every guerilla group needs to survive.

              -Erwos

            • Re:Excellent! (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Grishnakh ( 216268 )
              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 the

              • 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.

                The American people have elected George W. Bush to be their leader. George W. Bush has declared a

                • The American people have elected George W. Bush to be their leader. George W. Bush has declared a War on Terror and stated his intention of destroying terrorists. Does this mean that American civilian population is now an acceptable target for terrorists to attack and destroy ?

                  This is a stupid analogy. Substitute the word "criminals" for terrorists and you have a similar argument. No one's forcing anyone to be a terrorist or a criminal. Hezbollah wants to destroy the Israelis just because they exist.

                  Eith

                  • This is a stupid analogy. Substitute the word "criminals" for terrorists and you have a similar argument.

                    Yes. You do. That's my point. Your argument is stupid. It essentially justifies terrorism. In fact Hezbollah could use it to justify any further terror strikes.

                    No one's forcing anyone to be a terrorist or a criminal. Hezbollah wants to destroy the Israelis just because they exist.

                    Since I don't belong to Hezbollah, I don't know their motives in depth. I won't take your word for them, since you a

                    • Yes. You do. That's my point. Your argument is stupid. It essentially justifies terrorism. In fact Hezbollah could use it to justify any further terror strikes.

                      Huh? How does my argument justify terrorism? You seem to be equating terrorists with legitimate governments. Yes, Bush sucks as a Pres, but you can't call a government a terrorist entity unless it has specifically done terroristic things, such as attacking a country's civilians directly (not the same as collateral damage) in order to destabilize i

      • Re:Excellent! (Score:2, Informative)

        by mdozturk ( 973065 )
        The cover of Sunday's New York Times had a picture of 16 dead Lebanese, which were mostly children. Business as usual?

        • Re:Excellent! (Score:3, Interesting)

          by AK Marc ( 707885 )
          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 child
    • There is no way the U.S. health system can handle a pandemic, and distributing vaccine to a large portion of the population is years away. Most hospital emergecy rooms can barely cope with a busy Saturday night.

      If you want to track the march of the Avian flu on Google Earth, or just don't want your bird-flu news dumbed down to the level that journalists can understand, Declan Butler [declanbutler.info], a reporter for Nature magazine, has an excellent blog on the subject.

  • Birds or Humans ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JohnHegarty ( 453016 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:05AM (#15730394) Homepage
    As the comment on the pages says... is this for the birds or humans ?
    • It's for humans. The Avian flu is not a serious things for birds. Think of it this way, a cold is shitty, granted, but it won't destroy your life. In very rare cases will a cold last longer than a week and a half, and even rarer for it to have a permanent effect. But if...a dog, somehow someway contracted a common cold, and was completely unprepared to accept the virus and combat it, the dog would die without much of a fight. Monkeys live with AIDS like it's nothing, but it destroys us. The Avian flu is a b
      • Bird flu IS serious for birds. It kills them, and do it fast.
        • Similarly, the human Flu can kill humans. It's possible, even likely, but in juxtaposition with the Avian flu's effect on humans, it looks almost insignificant. Though, you're right..I did a little more looking after i posted and i learned that my inferred comparison of the avian flue being relatively harmless was wrong, perhaps i shouldn't have compared it to the common cold, rather Pneumonia might be a better choice. Either way, thank you for the clarification
      • wait... I think this is a bit different

        by itself, a virus crossing species does not necessarily imply increased morbidity in the new species. In fact, typically, viruses inside other species have little or no effect at all. They usually don't function. Only in rare cases when a cross species jump occurs (typically through mutations/and viral DNA exchange with native viruses), then it MIGHT be dangerous.

        Note that in the case of bird flu, the reason people die is from the extreme overreaction by the immun
      • From a Wikipedia article on the subject (and I won't go into any debate on credibility of that here):

        So far as we know the most common result of this is an illness so minor as to be not worth noticing (and thus little studied). But with the domestication of chickens and turkeys, we have created species subtypes (domesticated poultry) that can catch an avian flu virus adapted to waterfowl and have it rapidly mutate into a form that kills in days over 90% of an entire flock and spread to other flocks and kil
        • A list of things i've learned since posting my comment:
          • Bird flu is serious for birds
          • Bird flu is not that serious for some birds
          • Bird flu is serious for humans
          • Bird flu doesn't actually kill humans, it's humans that kill themselves with their own immune system
          • Bird flu doesn't affect humans that seriously

          But the most amazing revelation of all

          • Nobody really knows that much about the avian flu, least of all people me.

          All i can tell you for sure is that I don't have it, I don't know anyone that has

      • No, it is for birds... (Score:2, Informative)

        by denjin ( 115496 )
        The article above is missing the specifics, so try this one:
        http://www.mumbaimirror.com/nmirror/mmpaper.asp?se ctid=4&articleid=7162006205183757162006204743859 [mumbaimirror.com]

        "The vaccine will be injected into birds to prevent them from getting infected, he said.
        A government statement said it was a homologous vaccine derived from the H5N1 strain."

        The point of it is to stop it in birds, so it can't get on to humans I imagine.
        • Ah, very good! Thanks for clearing up the misconception! I suppose technically, it's for humans, because as the imperial human race, we couldn't care less about chickens, we'll move on to like other meats. It just gets put into the chickens, so that we don't have to deal with medical bills, it turns out vets are cheaper to employ than medical doctors :-P

          Gotta love the selfishness, and thanks again for the clarification

      • But if...a dog, somehow someway contracted a common cold, and was completely unprepared to accept the virus and combat it, the dog would die without much of a fight.

        There is no evidence for that. Quite the contrary. A pathogen needs to be sufficiently well adapted to its host to cause any real symptoms. For instance a virus that is well adapted to attack a rose or a tobacco leaf is not likely to do any damage to a human. Also, (to use a famous example) consider how deadly Ebola Reston is to monkeys and

      • As far as i know there has not been a single case of bird flu in humans in india. However, mass chaos resulted when bird flu hit the poultry industry. This research might've resulted from that. So, i am not sure if they have tested it on humans... since there haven't been any cases.

        US needs to intensify the outsourcing of the MEDICAL INDUSTRY AS WELL!!!
    • It's for humans.

      I am not a biologist, far from it but how can they develop a vaccine for a disease that hasn't appeared yet? I mean this bird flu is supposed to mutate into a dangerous virus that could kill a lot of humans but scientists don't know the final version of the virus yet they developped a vaccine for it?
      • Look at the last sentence of the first paragraph here [slashdot.org]. This disease has already appeared in humans; it killed 42 in Indonesia.
      • They can't, for sure.

        We are in an "arms race" between the viruses and the vaccines. THe other side (the viruses) can always recombine and mutate around the current vaccine. The virus we have not seen yet is bird flu in humans with high transmissibility. Until we see this in the wild, we can't possibly know (for sure) if a vaccine would work against it.

        The current process for annual flu vaccines are derived from a global search for current viruses, a bunch of annalysis, and a selction of strains which we
    • ... but I wanted to add, cynically perhaps:

      If it's for humans, it will be enormously expensive, and none of the people who actually need it will be able to afford it. Meanwhile, the maker of the vaccine will try to get the U.S. government to buy 300 million doses at retail price.

      If it's for animals, it'll be cheap enough to lace the entire food chain with it, and we'll only find out it has horrific side effects five years from now. ;-)

  • One less thing to worry about; True (Score:4, Insightful)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:05AM (#15730395) Homepage
    Now they just have to worry about patents and the costs of the vaccine and deployment. After all, now that there is a vaccine, any capitalist-minded people would think, "Hey! Let their chickens die out! We'll have a monopoly on chickens!"

    Are we to believe that they'll just give it out to the world?
    • India is trying really hard to catch up to the US but I don't think they are that jaded and incompasonate yet. (kidding :))
    • "Are we to believe that they'll just give it out to the world?"

      The Indians are usually quite willing to give away something that would help the animals because it would put them in better standing with their spirit guides. I wonder which tribe developed this? Was it Cherokee or Apache? I bet it was the Shawnee.

  • Did you even read the article? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:06AM (#15730398) Homepage

    There's already a vaccine for H5N1; all this article is saying is that now an Indian lab has produced one as well, so they don't have to import it.

    Great editing, as usual.

    • 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.

      • Re:Did you even read the article? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Halo1 ( 136547 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:34AM (#15730565)

        From the article:

        Rai informed the meeting that a comprehensive draft report had been submitted to an ICAR committee to develop guidelines for intellectual property management and commercialisation of technologies in the national agricultural system under the ICAR.

        Your comment reminds me of the large US hi-tech companies accusing the Chinese of "stealing their IP" [ffii.org] and then getting caught with their pants down when it turns out they were not delivering the "IP" they promised in their contracts.

        The "all the Chinese, Indians and other Asians can do is copy our great Western inventions" story is getting old very quickly, and more untrue every day. It would surprise me if they don't soon overtake the Western companies concerning the amount of awarded patents and things like that.

        • You should take a look at IBM's "globally integrated enterprise" [ft.com] ideas.

          Big Blue's chairman and chief executive writes in today's Financial Times that traditional multinational companies need to abandon their almost colonial approach to operations outside their home country. He cites as examples of this old-style method the way GM, Ford and his own company built factories in Europe and Asia but kept all the research and development in the US.

          Instead, he argues they need to move towards full global integrat

        • The "all the Chinese, Indians and other Asians can do is copy our great Western inventions" story is getting old very quickly, and more untrue every day.

          That's not what I got out of the comment. What I read was that they do copy "our great western" innovations. And, it's true. In exchange, we patent their folk remedies. Isn't global trade wonderful?

          China is especially guilty of this. They have never had any regard for anyone's IP (good or ill.)

          • China is especially guilty of this. They have never had any regard for anyone's IP (good or ill.)

            Neither do Western companies in general, except if it's their own or if it belongs to someone who's somehow dangerous to them. There is little or no "inherent respect for IP" anywhere, since in the end most of IPR law (in particular patents) is plain and simple trade policy.

        • Your comment reminds me of the large US hi-tech companies accusing the Chinese of "stealing their IP"

          Funnily enough, the FBI seem to think so too [bbc.co.uk]... From the fine article:

          The FBI agent in charge, Don Przybyla has no doubt where the principal threat comes from. He says "the majority are coming from China. They are using a shot-gun approach, flooding the Silicon Valley with engineers and scientists.

          "The Chinese have found success in obtaining the technology through stealing, essentially. Once succe

    • No, actually at the moment there is no vacine for the H5N1 virus. They used in some cases Tamiflu but later testing showed it's useless.
      • They used in some cases Tamiflu but later testing showed it's useless.

        ... due to resistant strains in H5N1 that were discovered.

        Which makes me wonder what's saying it won't happen again with this vaccine.

        Let's hope it won't though...

        • From what I have read it has never been usefull [wikipedia.org] against avian flu.

          On a side note, living in a affected country(Romania, lots of avian cases) this whole thing seems a little over-blown.
          • "On a side note, living in a affected country(Romania, lots of avian cases) this whole thing seems a little over-blown."

            It only seems that way because it has yet to mutate into a human-to-human form. There is nothing over-blown about the threat. If you were expecting the threat to happen now, well, sorry? It is still a threat, whether you're bored with it or not.

  • But it sounds as if it's no big deal :( (Score:3, Informative)

    by CurtMonash ( 986884 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:07AM (#15730405) Homepage
    It is described as an indigineous replacement for something they can already import. It sounds as if it's just for birds.

    And you hardly can inoculate all the poultry in a country. So the significance of this seems pretty limited.

    Dang. I had my hopes way up from reading the headline.
    • And you hardly can inoculate all the poultry in a country. So the significance of this seems pretty limited.

      Especially so, considering that the largest outbreaks of bird flu have been in countries with the most environmental polution (legacy agent orange contamination in Vietnam + chickens == weakened immune system especially susceptible to influenza).

      See Dr. Sherri Tenpenny's FOWL! Bird Flu: It's Not What You Think [amazon.com]

      or this interview [healthliesexposed.com].

      "FOWL!" is an investigative report into how dioxins, POPs and other enviro

  • Over-stating the case (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Brave Guy ( 457657 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:11AM (#15730436)

    Let's not jump the gun here. The big threat to humans is a mutated strain of something like H5N1 that does the damage of the original bird flu but spreads through humans as fast as a human flu. Developing a vaccine for this threat requires knowing what the threat is, and as yet, there have been no confirmed cases of human-human transmission.

    Even with recent advances, developing and mass-producing vaccines takes several weeks, by which time the vaccine will be irrelevant for many people if the mutated strain starts to spread. This is the nightmare scenario, and is why so much research is currently being done into improving vaccine development, and so much planning focusses on identifying human-human transmission as early as possible.

    Of course anything to reduce the spread of the original bird flu also reduces the opportunity for a mutated strain to develop, and is therefore a good thing. But let's not misunderstand what's been achieved here.

    • Re:Over-stating the case (Score:4, Insightful)

      by spiritraveller ( 641174 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:29AM (#15730548)
      Of course anything to reduce the spread of the original bird flu also reduces the opportunity for a mutated strain to develop, and is therefore a good thing. But let's not misunderstand what's been achieved here.

      But that is exactly what makes it important. India having it's own vaccine means that she can do a much better job of innoculating her own chickens, which dramatically reduces the likelihood that a mutated human-to-human-contagious form of the disease would come from India.

      Being that India is the 2nd most populated country in the world, I'd say that this is very significant.
    • I understand that, should the flu develop a mutated strain capable of human-human transmission, there's no guarantee that this vaccine will be effective against the new virus. But there's no guarantee to the contrary, either, is there? My understanding was that many vaccines can have some cross-applicability to viruses of slightly different strains (ex. cowpox/smallpox); a mutation that changed the virus's transmission capabilities might or might not alter the particular proteins that are recognized as an
    • The problem with the popular prognosis (which you are expressing here) is that the popular view of how quickly influenza spreads in humans is extremely skewed. Our view is almost entirely shaped by the evidence provided by the 1918 pandemic. Left out of the popular description of the 1918 pandmic is the putrid conditions of World War I victims living in close quarters, in warm weather, with multiple open wounds. Influenza was more of the lucky disease that found ripe pasteurs than a blood-thirsy, human-kill

  • You do realize (Score:2, Informative)

    by quo_vadis ( 889902 )
    that this vaccine is for birds and not humans. [mumbaimirror.com] The vaccine will prevent avian to human transmission, but will be useless if H5N1, the avian flu virus mutates into human infective form.
  • without strict enforcement of IP vaccine development is possible...
    with strict enforcement of IP vaccine development is not possible...

    but then again, this is slashdot and i am preeching to the converted...

    thank goodness for the bill and melida gates foundation.
    • 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 i
  • It's most likely going to prove impossible to inocculate the entire wild bird populations in the areas which are affected by Bird Flu. Further more, one of the main problems with flu strain viruses is their speed of mutation: every year the flu vaccine is different as the strains have adapted. It's a good start, but it doesn't guarantee the flu won't just hide in wild bird populations and re-emerge an even more agressive strain...
    • you vaccinate the non-wild birds (domesticated somehow doesn't fit), because these are the birds that humans are most likely to come in contact with. This reduces the chances of people catching the current virus from infected birds (regular, close contact with an infected bird seems to be a factor in bird/human transmission. In addition, once these birds are vaccinated, you've hopefully created a significant reduction in the bird/human interface where mutation to a more transmissible form is likely to occur
  • Well while I am happy to see a Vaccine being announced... However I am hoping that one will be developed for my parrots. I love my birdies, and do not wish for them to get the bird flu.

  • Glass half empty and full (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hao Wu ( 652581 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @07:44AM (#15730615) Homepage
    Developing a vaccine was never the problem, rather making it FAST enough in sufficient quantities in the event of a pandemic. There is no guessing the genetic sequence of the virus before then, and basically a year of production is required after when ever it appears. Not before.

    Whatever vaccine they made today is not going to be greatly effective when a bird flu mutates and becomes transmittable from person-to-person.

    • If the vacceine is effective againstt he current popular strain in avians, and they can make it rapidly (easier to do with chickens since they need smaller doses than humans, they can innoculate all the chickens in the country. Having the virus nealy eliminated in the bird population greatly mitigates the risk of having it mutate into the human strain of the virus.
    • So there is "no guessing the genetic sequence of the virus before [a pandemic]" yet you know that current vaccines are "not going to be greatly effective"?.

  • "One less thing to worry about"? (Score:4, Funny)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @08:00AM (#15730711)
    Was the 42nd victim a troublemaker?

  • Oh man!!! (Score:2, Funny)

    by rowama ( 907743 )
    I just finished my underground shelter yesterday. It had food, cable internet, food, cable and sat TV, food, PS2, food, games, food, a bed, food, etc. I ordered a special computer. What shall I do with all these preps...

    I guess I could just seclude myself, eat, sit at the computer, play games, watch TV. Actually, nothing has changed.
  • This is one of the many successes the Indians and Chineese will have showing up the West (US/Europe) in science and technology. I think over the next 10-20 years, it will become more frequent that we see breakthroughs from these areas.

  • How Effective is It? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by giafly ( 926567 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @09:06AM (#15731093)
    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 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 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?
  • I would love to see the really important people get this kind of protection first
    and along with it why don't we give them the same vaccination regimen that has
    worked so well for our troops deployed to the gulf.
  • There is no vaccine for H5N1 until now. The post is correct. This is not a generic version of an existing vaccine. BTW, you cannot have a generic released into the market until the patent of the original expires. That takes 20 years. Also there is nothing wrong with someone making generics. Without generics, the poor countries have no way of buying medicines.
  • Official Press Release at: http://www.icar.org.in/pr/16072006.htm [icar.org.in]

  • Awesome! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Phoenix666 ( 184391 ) on Monday July 17, 2006 @01:05PM (#15732261)
    But what ever are Fox, CNN, and the Bush administration going to use to distract us now? It's been such an integral part of their claim that the sky is falling and that we should therefore hand over all our freedoms. Does this mean double helpings of immigrant phobia? Would have to be, since if they whip up North Korea or Iran, they'd actually have to do something about it.

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