Just in case you still think the US government has a functioning system of checks and balances, the following article in yesterday’s NY Times’ by Eric Lichtblau should disabuse you of such a quaint notion. As the article explains, the Inspector General (IG) watchdog system was instituted in the wake of Watergate to provide independent…

Written by Alan Cassels, a British Columbia drug policy researcher, via Lown Institute Weekly: “Normally, the flu vaccine is between 50 to 60 percent effective”— Dr. Tom Frieden, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) How effective is the flu shot?    That’s an important question that generates many headlines across North America…

Several Republican Presidential candidates (Donald Trump, Dr. Ben Carson and Dr. Rand Paul) were asked in the debate September 16 about their opinion of whether vaccines are linked to autism.  Trump said yes, vaccines cause autism.  He gave examples of his employees whose normal children regressed into autism shortly after a vaccination. Dr. Ben Carson,…

UPDATE:  From the Oct 11 WaPo: The AC-130U plane, circling above in the dark, raked the medical compound with bursts of cannon fire, potentially even using high explosive incendiary munitions, for more than an hour. The assault left at least 22 people dead, some of them burned to death. A US airstrike on Kuduz repeatedly…

We Can’t Trust Companies To Do The Right Thing, But We Trust Their Voting Machines?  by David Yee at IVN: The VW case of tampering with the computing in their automobiles for emission tests once again highlights just how easy it is for a computer to “do” whatever it’s programmed to do — even if…

Drugs and devices licensed in the US often rely on data generated overseas for FDA approval.  It should come as no surprise that FDA oversight of foreign clinical trials may be weak or nonexistent, and that drug/device approvals today seem more and more likely to be based on data whose reliability is far from assured…especially…

Recently I worked in another Maine city and was astonished at the number of patients I encountered who were using heroin. I had never seen anything like it, during a lifetime practicing medicine. In New Hampshire, it was said, deaths from heroin now exceed deaths from car accidents. Massachusetts (population under 7 million) had 1,000 deaths related to (all) opioids…

Vaccine injuries are real.  They can be serious and often fail to respond to treatment. The most serious injuries are usually to the brain. Vaccine injuries may cause death. The US’ federal vaccine injury compensation program has paid out $3.18 billion dollars in compensation for vaccine injuries since the program was established in 1988.  Yet with…

       UPDATE:   575 shipments, 192 total labs received live, incompletely irradiated Dugway anthrax.  Congressional hearing held 7/28/15. (The subjects in my Cheer! below are among those mentioned by USAT on July 21, 2015–Nass) The CDC Cheer  When anthrax spores are flying through its halls, whaddaya do? You know what to do:  It’s a…

The 21st Century Cures Act was passed (unanimously) out of Committee on July 7, 2015 and passed by the House on July 10, by a vote of 344 to 77.   It could have been called the Stealth Act:  There was very little preceding discussion of this bill, despite its potentially huge effects on US…

Another giveaway to health industries (and woe to patients) is embodied in the so-called 21st Century Cures Act.   It passed the House of Representatives this week before you knew it existed. Usually industry’s best friend, the NY Times surprisingly editorialized against this shameful bill today.  Here is what the Times wrote: “A bill passed by…

DHHS tells Bloomberg/WaPo it made a mistake about giving that Ebola drug contract to the anthrax vaccine manufacturer. Crayton HarrisonJul 16, 2015 4:40 pm ET (Source retracts statement cited in July 15 story.) “This release was sent in error as the contract has not been signed by all parties,” the agency said in a separate…

Recall that the current anthrax vaccine manufacturer has never developed and brought to market a single drug.  The anthrax vaccine was developed by the US army.  The company has purchased other companies, such as Cangene, that do have a few marketable products, though the market for them is small. It is also marketing a nerve gas decontamination skin…

What information exactly does the NSA (and its Five Eyes partners) have access to?  At least as much as noted below.  How long is the information stored?  Maybe that is a function of the storage available, which we know is increasing rapidly. From The Intercept: One of the National Security Agency’s most powerful tools of…

From USA Today:  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — which has publicly disclosed three serious laboratory accidents during the past year involving Ebola, anthrax and a deadly strain of bird flu — says it will take three more years before it will release copies of all incident reports for the agency’s labs in Atlanta and Fort…

Hepatitis B is a serious disease.  It is highly prevalent in many countries in Asia (nearly 10% of Chinese carried the illness in 1992), but fortunately is of low prevalence in the US.  Per CDC, the overall reported US incidence rate for 2013 was 1.0 case per 100,000 population. After adjusting for under-ascertainment and under-reporting,…

USA Today reported that a CDC study found that anthrax spore killing had not been standardized using control spore samples at Dugway.  Tests of different spore concentrations and volumes had not been tested against different radiation doses to ascertain the degree of lethality of the process under varying conditions. It seems remarkable to me that…

From the Washington Times: Last week, Republicans and Democrats in Congress joined President Obama in congratulating themselves for taming the National Security Agency’s voracious appetite for spying. By permitting one section of the Patriot Act to expire and by replacing it with the USA Freedom Act, the federal government is taking credit for taming beasts of its own…

On June 9, two weeks since this story first burst forth, we are up to 68 labs that likely got some live anthrax from Dugway.  And another country has been added, the UK. If the story is accurate as told so far, what probably happened is that there was incomplete inactivation due to inadequate doses…

I will be writing more about the US DoD assertion that up to 66 laboratories in 19 states, the District of Columbia and three countries  (Australia, South Korea and Canada) received live anthrax spores by mistake from an Army lab at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. The June 4 WSJ (behind a paywall) says the problem…

Wow!  Who saw that coming?  The Constitution did not specify that medical care was a federal responsibility, so for over 200 years it has been left to the states.  Yes, fifty years ago we got Medicare and Medicaid, and now the Affordable (for whom?) Care Act, but the specifics of what drugs and vaccines people…

In the last few days there have been multiple news articles and testimonies in the Maine and Vermont legislatures about the need to impose vaccine mandates to protect immunocompromised children.[1] [2]  I attended the vaccine bills’ hearing in Augusta, Maine on May 11, which lasted into the night. I also attended the Vermont Senate hearing…

My maternal grandfather died in 1968 of what was almost certainly a fulminant Hepatitis B infection (causing rapid liver failure, occurring in just 1% of acute cases). He probably acquired it working part-time in a deli, slicing meat. In med school a few years later, I learned that butchers had increased risk. You get Hepatitis…

Let’s start with tetanus, the disease we think of when scratched with something rusty or dirty, and develop an abscess. This is a terrible illness, because tetanus bacteria produce a nerve toxin that takes months to recover from.   First, how much tetanus disease is there is the US?  Second, does it spread from person-to-person? There are…

Pharmaceutical companies conduct pre-clinical (without people) and clinical research (utilizing human subjects) to understand the effects of drugs they are developing. Until now, even though the research often involves human voluntary subjects who may not be compensated for their participation, the findings of the research have been considered proprietary, or owned by the research sponsor….

JAMA Intern Med. 2015 Apr 1;175(4):567-77. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.7774. Research Misconduct Identified by the US Food and Drug Administration: Out of Sight, Out of Mind, Out of the Peer-Reviewed Literature. Seife C1. Author information Abstract IMPORTANCE: Every year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspects several hundred clinical sites performing biomedical research on human participants and…

In that same panel on vaccines, another panelist alleged that vaccines are a low-margin product and a low profit industry.  It was said that many companies left the market. That was true once.  This is now.  There are few companies due to tremendous market consolidation in pharmaceutical companies overall. Prices of vaccines have gone crazy….

Yesterday I was in a televised panel discussion about vaccines, and I suggested that Merck might influence CDC by donating to CDC’s foundation and by having hired CDC’s former Director, Julie Gerberding, as President of Merck Vaccines.  After NJ’s Health Director Eddie Bresnitz mandated Merck’s HPV vaccine in NJ, he too was given a job…

Here is the Complaint, filed on April 2, 2015 alleging gross mishandling of the case on many levels, and concealment of evidence exonerating Bruce Ivins: http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1714250-former-fbi-special-agent-in-charge-richard.html   Here is the story in the NY Times of April 8. Here is the story in Courthouse News. And here are some extraordinary excerpts from the complaint that validate things…

Lots of babies get measles in Africa and India, and it is a significant cause of death there.  A great deal of work has gone into developing measles vaccines that can be given to children at younger and younger ages, especially in Africa, for this reason.  But in the United States, endemic measles has been…

Marcia Angell (Harvard professor, writer and former NEJM editor) has penned another excellent book review for the NY Review of Books.  This time, she discusses Stephen Brill’s new book on Obamacare, “America’s Bitter Pill”.  Two excerpts follow: … Practically every serious economic analysis of the American health system has concluded that the most efficient way…

Pakistan jails 471 parents who refused to give polio vaccine to children–The Guardian Parents in north-west of country were imprisoned under government orders on charges of endangering public security A health worker gives a polio vaccine to a child in Peshawar, Pakistan. Photograph: Mohammad Sajjad/AP Endemic polio was eliminated in the US by 1980.  Nearly…

This graph comes from the Washington Post.  Before 1993 there were many US measles cases, mainly due to waning of vaccine-induced immunity. Then an additional MMR dose was added to the vaccine schedule in the US, and measles immunity improved. There is no endemic measles in the US, helped by the fact there is no…

And another story about an inexplicable contracting decision regarding a biodefense product, in today’s WaPo: Last year, a Silicon Valley start-up came close to producing what government scientists considered a breakthrough technology — a device the size of a ski boot that could test for tiny microorganisms at rapid speed, helping to safeguard the nation…

As discussed in this blog last October and November, Ebola transmission by air is likely, but also likely not a major form of spread. The WaPo comments on an academic piece written by several experts in the field: … As evidence, the research notes that Ebola virus has been found on the outside of face masks…

A few facts about measles need to be told.  Measles is not rapidly expanding in the US or internationally, and CDC says the rate of vaccination for measles has been stable since 1994. (However, in some states, like Oregon, the number of vaccine waivers has tripled to 6% in about 10 years.  In response, last March…

I’ve been asked to contrast the risk from the disease measles with the risk from the measles vaccine, usually the MMR.  MMR stands for Measles, Mumps, Rubella (rubella is german measles) and so the MMR vaccine contains 3 live, attenuated (weakened) viruses that reproduce in the body of the person receiving the vaccine. Live vaccines…

Measles is uncomfortable. I remember having it, and it was the worst of all my childhood diseases. It was very painful to eat and drink. Still, I was better in about a week. And then I had life-long immunity.   What is the death rate from measles?  By the time I had measles, in 1959, only…

The son has been treated for leukemia and is still immune-compromised, has not received the live measles vaccine, as it might be dangerous for him. So the dad wants his child protected by forcing everyone else in the school to be vaccinated, to create a safe cocoon (at least while in school) for his child….

From the AP: GENEVA — The World Health Organization is debating how to reform itself after botching the response to the Ebola outbreak, a sluggish performance that experts say cost thousands of lives. On Sunday, WHO’s executive board planned to discuss proposals that could radically transform the United Nations health agency in response to sharp…

Pertussis (whooping cough) epidemics continue to increase in the US, with 50,000 recorded cases this year. Most people who got pertussis have been fully vaccinated.  Thanks to investigative journalist Sharyl Atkisson for pointing out the baboon research, discussed in the NY Times and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year.  FDA’s Office of Vaccines…

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is investigating a laboratory mistake that has potentially exposed workers to the Ebola virus. From the NYT:  A laboratory mistake at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may have exposed a technician to the deadly Ebola virus, federal officials said on…

Email Share Tweet Save More Dick Cheney. CreditWin McNamee/Getty Images From the Sunday NY Times of December 21: Since the day President Obama took office, he has failed to bring to justice anyone responsible for the torture of terrorism suspects — an official government program conceived and carried out in the years after the attacks of…

The UK is paying out about $1.7 million dollars per victim.  Although the media rarely reported on the severity of narcolepsy cases, vaccine-induced narcolepsy patients are much sicker than most people with narcolepsy.  It isn’t only a matter of falling asleep; there is additional brain damage, including personality changes. Now scientists in Finland, where the…

I chose the following short AP report from the WaPo because it gets right to the point: NATIONWIDE (AP) – The Government Accountability Office says the science the Federal Bureau of Investigations used to investigate the 2001 anthrax attacks was flawed. The GAO released a report Friday on its findings. The agency didn’t take a position on the FBI’s…

Here is the GAO report released today, two years in the making, a study done for unnamed “congressional requesters.” In past years, the requesters have been listed, but in this case, they are not. This most likely reflects the sensitivity of this matter. Why so sensitive? Because the FBI botched its investigation, never had even…

CDC has created a litany of excuses for why it recommends flu vaccines for kids despite poor protection against the majority of this year’s influenza strains (H1N1 and H3N2). See below for the data on the poor vaccine match this year. Below are the reasons CDC says parents should still give the current vaccine to their children….

NYC’s unelected health department demanded last December that children aged 6 months to 5 years receive yearly flu vaccinations. This was one of outgoing mayor (and newly minted health expert) Michael Bloomberg’s gifts to the city, along with the banning of extra large soft drinks. Are soft drinks a threat to others?  What right has any…

Yesterday, authors from the NIH, NY and Toronto published a paper describing their screening system for compounds against Ebola.  The method has identified a large number of approved substances with potential benefits. Many of them have been mentioned in this blog previously, such as clomifene, antimalarials and antiarrhythmics.  Ninety-five additional compounds were also found to…

I wrote about the fact there was a “post-Ebola syndrome” here, which might include visual problems (usually due to uveitis), joint pains, and psychological issues.  It was not well defined due to the small size of previous epidemics and small number of survivors. Now Al Jazeera has written about several people whose post-Ebola survival is complicated…

The NEJM published a piece written primarily by Medicins Sans Frontieres clinicians who have worked in Liberia, describing the clinical course of Ebola patients, and concluding with the paragraph below, acknowledging the need to provide more comprehensive care than MSF was able to provide earlier in the outbreak. I believe we are now arriving at a…

Just out as a provisional pdf (final version is in production), 3 scientists have reviewed the totality of the published data on Ebola therapeutics, and come up with a framework for combining the use of drugs for their potential synergistic effects.  For me, this put many disparate facts about Ebola into focus, providing much of…

The following story describes this year’s publication of the famed Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International. This annual country metric gets widely discussed. The new index shows that most governments (2/3) “show very high levels of corruption.”  Corruption is criminal, it keeps the criminals in power, it leaves little room for meaningful change and advancement…

I have been talking about how one might improve clinical care of Ebola patients, and the need for trials to identify the best treatments, best empiric iv fluids, etc.  This is necessary both to improve survival rates and also to give Ebola patients a reason to come to Ebola treatment centers, which many perceive to be…

I guess 53 beds (located in 35 hospitals) is progress, but not a lot of progress… when you consider that in Africa there have been more than 53 cases from a single town. From the WaPo: … The 35 designated hospitals will have total treatment capacity of 53 beds.In trying to establish a network of…

The WaPo explores which hospitals will be approved by CDC to treat Ebola patients, and whether hospitals will lose or gain from such a designation. Treating an Ebola patient scares other patients away, puts staff at risk, and demands extraordinary levels of intensive care that exceed what can be reimbursed by insurers, and sometimes what can…

I have been desperately seeking ideas to get us to that sweet spot: where medical providers will know how to manage Ebola in Africa, and their treatments will keep most Ebola victims alive, while not costing a million dollars per patient, or more. I envision patients having access to lab tests, iv fluids, convalescent serum, automatic…

The Tampa Bay Times (see below) reported today that two Florida children had died of flu. Which is odd, because if you scroll down to the current CDC charts below you will see a) that the mortality from flu and pneumonia is about as low as it gets, right now, and b) only one flu-associated child…

From Gallup:  Americans’ Ratings of CDC Down After Ebola Crisis No other agencies measured showed a decline in ratings PRINCETON, N.J. — Americans’ ratings of the job being done by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are down significantly from last year, from 60% saying it is doing an “excellent” or “good” job to 50%….

From NBC News: … Although the CDC initially said any U.S. hospital should be able to care for an Ebola patient, Gold (Chancellor of the University of Nebraska Medical School, where 3 victims were treated) argued that it really often does require a special biocontainment unit. There are only four in the country: at Nebraska,…

A woman arrived in NY 3 weeks ago from Guinea and was being monitored (presumably by phone) daily and allegedly had no Ebola symptoms.  But she just died.  No one seems to know why. And so, yes, they will test her remains for Ebola… but only out of an ‘abundance of caution.’  What happens to…

US media have been silent about this elephant in the room: those who recover from Ebola are likely to have positive PCR tests of semen, vaginal fluid, breast milk, urine and skin (including sweat) for one to several months after recovery.  There are several anecdotes describing disease transmission to a partner following recovery. Because it…

Click here for the full, free text.  Ideas and Opinions | online 16 October 2014 Caring for Patients with Ebola: A challenge in Any Care Facility Mark G. Kortepeter, MD, MPH; Philip W. Smith, MD; Angela Hewlett, MD; and Theodore J. Cieslak, MD The largest outbreak of Ebola virus continues unabated in West Africa. With the recent death of a…

Admittedly, I am biased about how I think clinical trials should be conducted.  I believe they necessitate the very finest care of patients, meticulous ethical conduct, and collection of the most complete data possible.  Most importantly, data obtained from human subjects, who have taken on some risk to advance medical knowledge, should imho never be…

Ten months into the out-of-control Ebola epidemic, and 38 years since the first Ebola epidemic, the DHHS Assistant Secretary of Health for Preparedness, Nicole Lurie, had a workshop convened by IOM with NIH, CDC, NIOSH, academics, etc. to discuss what needs to be learned about Ebola, and how research can address these questions. Here is…

Let me start this piece with the bottom line: I want to be clear that patients with Ebola virus disease are sicker, in general, than patients with any other medical condition, in the US or anywhere else. They are subject to many more serious complications than other patients. They require more care, more lab tests, more procedures,…

I previously recommended alcohol hand rub (usually 70% ethyl or isopropyl alcohol) to kill Ebola on hands and gloves, which CDC recommends, along with soap and water. From more reading, I no longer feel this is adequate, as it appears alcohol has not been tested on Ebola, and because other environmental tests have found Ebola…

According to the Washington Post, NY’s Bellevue Hospital plans to discharge Dr. Craig Spencer tomorrow. This is great news.  Everyone who has been treated in the US, with the exception of Eric Duncan, has survived Ebola.  All those we know about (9 people) were diagnosed and treated early, except Mr. Duncan. This is an 89%…

Here’s the Report, written by the Transfusion Transmitted Disease Committee of the American Association of Blood Banks. Notable quotes: Physicochemical properties: Stable at room temperature and can resist desiccation (drying); inactivated at 60°C [140 F] for 30 minutes [However, the 1984 Mitchell and McCormick paper that studied virus inactivation found that the time to inactivation…

This type of approach is what I recommended in my Congressional testimony in 2001, for many potential pathogens, following the anthrax letters. What are monoclonal antibodies? The human immune system takes apart microbial pathogens and manufactures antibodies to a variety of sites on the microbe, honing its response as the infection progresses. Nearly 40 years…

From the Associated Press: The nasal spray version of the flu vaccine did not protect young children against swine flu last winter and might not work again this year, health officials said Thursday. Preliminary results from three studies found that AstraZeneca’s FluMist had little or no effect in children against swine flu. That was the…

I will elaborate on this important subject as I learn more.  And what more has been learned about the benefits of lamivudine, an antiviral used by a Liberian doctor with reported high survival in a small number of patients?  UPDATE Nov 14:  A WHO committee says it does not work.  MSF will test 2 antiviral…

The following table is current as of October 27, 2014 per FDA.  Experimental drugs are being authorized on a compassionate use basis, for those already ill from Ebola.  I find no legal authority in the US for using experimental vaccines currently. Diagnostic Test Date Letter ofAuthorization (PDF) Fact Sheet for Healthcare Providers (PDF) Fact Sheet for Patients…

Whatever happened to that Ebola czar?  He could, if he wanted, cut through any red tape blocking the sharing of new Ebola samples (which in some cases do not even have to be live, and therefore shipping issues should disappear) in a few minutes.   I doubt this is a red tape issue.  Blocking even…

In the news today is the story of how India has refused to agree with a World Trade Organization (WTO) demand that it scale back its stockpiling of grains.  I recall when the IMF/World Bank demanded something similar of African governments decades ago.  The governments sold off their stockpiles in exchange for IMF loans. Soon…

Reuters’ Sharon Begley has to be one of the very best science journalists in the US.  She always gets to the meat of the matter.  Here she gives us the highlights of what scientists said remains unknown about Ebola transmission, at an IOM meeting November 3.  The full article is below, and it confirms what…

This site‘s owner decided to fill the gap when the Associated Press chose to stop publishing articles on suspected Ebola cases.  Great info!

And that could be why we are hearing so little despite multiple suspected cases around the country. Sunday, Nov. 2, someone recently returned from Liberia developed a fever, and was hospitalized at Duke.  The publicy learned about this because a doctor at Duke is also a Forbes journalist, who had not signed on to the…

CDC changed its story again.  As of October 27, CDC updated its risk guidelines to acknowledge that being in a room or on a plane with someone who is symptomatic with Ebola puts others at low, but not zero, risk of contagion.  I applaud CDC for this change.  It admits there is much we do…

I would recommend that healthcare workers read the complete article.  We are used to outfit #1, but the details for #2 and #3 (especially their removal) are hazy for many of us, since we have never before had to use this level of personal protection to protect ourselves from our patients’ infections. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/15/us/changes-to-ebola-protection-worn-by-us-hospital-workers.html Changes to…

This piece in the Lancet, authored by Cowling and Yu, discusses issues of Ebola dissemination and means to reduce spread to other countries.  Its final paragraph discusses what we do not yet know, but need to learn: There are several important near-future research needs. Perhaps most urgent is a better understanding of the effectiveness of…

From CDC regarding how one must handle laboratory specimens from someone with Ebola: “Clinical specimens [such as blood or urine] from persons suspected of being infected with one of the agents listed in this summary (Ebola is listed as BSL-4 on page 251) should be submitted to a laboratory with a BSL-4 maximum containment facility.”…

Ebola is killing 60-70% of those affected, even with treatment.  Manufacturers say it will take quite a while to produce sufficient supplies of a vaccine, and that bulk manufacturing will only begin after one of several vaccine candidates is chosen. This makes no sense. The US government spent $440 million to help 3 companies develop…

On Sept 30 I wrote a blog post about how CDC’s Director Frieden was wrong to claim that any US hospital could manage an Ebola patient.  Circumstances sadly proved me right in the case of Dallas, Texas.  Has that changed now that we have had more time to prepare? After the death of Thomas Eric…

This article discusses literally a couple dozen vaccines and drugs that are in development for Ebola.  How is their testing being fast-tracked ? BioDrugs. 2013 Dec;27(6):565-83. doi: 10.1007/s40259-013-0046-1. Choi JH1, Croyle MA. Author information Abstract Ebola is a highly virulent pathogen causing severe hemorrhagic fever with a high case fatality rate in humans and non-human primates (NHPs)….

J Appl Microbiol. 2010 Nov;109(5):1531-9. The survival of filoviruses (Ebola and Marburg) in liquids, on solid substrates and in a dynamic aerosol Piercy TJ1, Smither SJ, Steward JA, Eastaugh L, Lever MS. Author information Abstract AIMS: Filoviruses are associated with high morbidity and lethality rates in humans, are capable of human-to-human transmission, via infected material such as blood, and are…

CDC issued a new poster Friday night October 24, which admits Ebola may in fact be airborne. But CDC says it doesn’t travel farther than 3 feet.  Well, at least CDC is starting to move the narrative.  Maybe tomorrow it will be 5 feet.  Then 10.  Maybe next month they will tell us why all…

The following paper was written by CDC scientists in 1999. J Infect Dis. 1999 Feb;179 Suppl 1:S92-7.  Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever, Kikwit, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1995: risk factors for patients without a reported exposure.  Roels TH1, Bloom AS, Buffington J, Muhungu GL, Mac Kenzie WR, Khan AS, Ndambi R, Noah DL, Rolka HR, Peters CJ, Ksiazek TG. Author information Abstract In 1995, 316 people became…

A quarantine will help stop cases appearing in the US in the near-term, but may mean that fewer medical professionals will volunteer to work in Africa, making control of Africa’s epidemic harder, thus making things worse for the US in the long-term.  (Only 0.5% of MSF staff or less have developed Ebola.) From today’s WaPO:…

Ebola is a designated BSL-4 (Biosafety Level 4) virus.  It requires the maximal level of containment possible.  [Anthrax, by the way, is less dangerous, requiring less containment (BSL-3) than Ebola.]  Ebola’s mortality rate is the highest I know of, for any infectious disease. CDC acknowledges (below, in a 2009 publication on page 45) that Ebola requires…

From CBS: But unfortunately, Ebola survivors do often develop certain chronic inflammatory conditions that affect the joints and eyes, problems that can follow a survivor through the remainder of their life. Dr. Amar Safdar, associate professor of infectious diseases and immunology at NYU Langone Medical Center, told CBS News these chronic conditions are a result…

When did pharmaceutical manufacturers demand to be indemnified by governments, when previously asked to produce vaccines? First time:  1976 swine flu.  One soldier died of swine flu at Fort Dix, the virus never did spread through the US population, but 45 million Americans were vaccinated with an unecessary vaccine, several hundred developed Guillain Barre syndrome…

Not sure why this is still a subject for debate.  Animal models establish that Ebola can be transmitted via aerosol secretions under lab conditions.  The question remaining is how often this happens in humans. Maybe it does; maybe it doesn’t. Despite CDC protestations regarding airborne spread, the new guidelines for personal protective equipment issued by…

Below are excerpts from a longer discussion here.  As one of the main providers of Ebola treatment in West Africa, MSF has chosen to take an active role in trialling experimental treatments. We add value to the trial process as we have access to large numbers of patients and therefore potential recipients of the experimental…

I read the full text but can’t post it due to copyright.  The first review is from U Texas.  BioDrugs. 2013 Dec;27(6):565-83. doi: 10.1007/s40259-013-0046-1. Emerging Targets and Novel Approaches to Ebola Virus Prophylaxis and Treatment Choi JH1, Croyle MA. Abstract Ebola is a highly virulent pathogen causing severe hemorrhagic fever with a high case fatality rate in humans…

Here are CDC’s definitions for the different modes of spread of infectious agents.  Scroll down to IB3b and c and you will see that CDC has defined droplet transmission as a form of contact transmission. This may be CDC’s technical justification for insisting that Ebola does not spread via the airborne route, when there is ample evidence…

The West Africa Ebola mortality rate with treatment is very high. Normally, mortality drops when doctors gain experience with new diseases and learn how best to care for patients. This seems not to be the case with this Ebola. West African Ebola may be spreading more easily than other Ebola outbreaks.  [Thanks to Washington’s Blog…