Emily
Editor, Senior Moderator
Re: Researchers will mix H1N1 swine flu virus with H5N1 bird flu virus
The ethics concern me, Tropical, and the validity of the animal model. DARPA has been working on an artificial human immune system and I hope this kind of modeling will replace animals ASAP. Seems like a system useful for predicting vaccine safety and efficacy could also be used for these "let's see what happens" type research projects.
http://www.darpa.mil/Docs/Biology-biomedical_services_200807171322092.pdf
"A prominent program, now nearing transition into use, is the Rapid Vaccine Assessment program. This program has created a high-fidelity, artificial human immune system (AIS) on a chip. The AIS will eliminate years of preliminary, and often non-predictive, animal testing of vaccines and therapeutics before reaching human trials. Having a high-throughput, in vitro human system will allow screening of vaccine candidates in a real human system, reflective of multiple, human genetic types. ?Not only will the AIS select likely winners, but more importantly, it will reject the losers before wasting years of development and risking side effects in human test subjects,? Giroir says."
The ethics concern me, Tropical, and the validity of the animal model. DARPA has been working on an artificial human immune system and I hope this kind of modeling will replace animals ASAP. Seems like a system useful for predicting vaccine safety and efficacy could also be used for these "let's see what happens" type research projects.
http://www.darpa.mil/Docs/Biology-biomedical_services_200807171322092.pdf
"A prominent program, now nearing transition into use, is the Rapid Vaccine Assessment program. This program has created a high-fidelity, artificial human immune system (AIS) on a chip. The AIS will eliminate years of preliminary, and often non-predictive, animal testing of vaccines and therapeutics before reaching human trials. Having a high-throughput, in vitro human system will allow screening of vaccine candidates in a real human system, reflective of multiple, human genetic types. ?Not only will the AIS select likely winners, but more importantly, it will reject the losers before wasting years of development and risking side effects in human test subjects,? Giroir says."