E. U. exit; zika & dengue

  Exiting E. U. is very profound, but very few if any can define what governmental model is that of E. U.  British history and culture largely define Britain.  E. U. from 1973 has included Britain—that is, to the degree that both the “Continent” and the Island willingly have participated with each other.  However, for many millions of people speaking so many languages to form a real unity over say 43 years is nearly impossible unless something very profound and very clear leads the way.  So there you have an idea of the E. U.

  To a remarkable degree the digital revolution has somewhat led the way forward nowadays on this planet.  By itself the digital revolution cannot do it all, it isn’t a magic wand.

  British history, something like American history, is peculiar because many threads have gone into it, into the melting pot and initiations of discovering liberty and how this quality is a revolution, not a half-ass thing.  One should not forget that the digital revolution came out of the scientific revolution which came to a surprisingly great extent out of the British renaissance.

  Exiting E. U. is, for those who would march to the liberty standard, like selling all one has in order to buy the pearl of great price.           -R, Mt. Shasta, CA, 6-24-2016

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http://plus55.com/culture/2016/06/brazil-colombia-join-forces-fight-zika-virus

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6-8-16     http://edmdigest.com/news/who-zika-likely-linked-to-wider-range-of-birth-defects/

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http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2016-05-21/colombia-5-cases-of-zika-associated-microcephaly-this-year

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6-15-16          Vaccine development is tricky because dengue is caused by four viruses, each slightly different but all capable of causing disease on their own. While infection with one version, called a serotype, is thought to confer lifelong immunity against that serotype, a subsequent infection from a different serotype can be worse than the first. The second time around, leftover antibodies from the first episode can sometimes turn traitor, enhancing growth of the virus inside the body.

This one-two punch can lead to unyielding forms of dengue, including potentially fatal hemorrhagic fever. “In 95 percent of people who have very severe disease, it’s because they’ve gotten a second infection of a different type,” says Stephen Thomas of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md. “If you get infected with dengue 1, and five years later you get another dengue 1, we believe you’ll be protected. If you get infected with dengue 2, there are biological processes that increase your chances of severe disease.” The same goes for types 3 and 4. And the risk probably lasts a lifetime — or until a person is infected with all four serotypes.

Three dengue vaccines

It’s been a long road to a dengue vaccine. A recently approved, but less-than-perfect, version made by the company Sanofi Pasteur starts with the yellow fever genome used in the yellow fever vaccine and adds genes from dengue virus types 1–4. Other vaccines in development, by NIH and CDC researchers and others, contain different mixes of the four dengue virus genomes.

Source: A.l. Rothman/Nat. Rev. Immunol. 2011

Scientists have attempted to develop a dengue vaccine that both simultaneously and evenly provides immunity to all four dengue viruses. “Most people say if a vaccine works even just a little bit, it’s better than nothing,” Durbin says. In the case of dengue, however, “a bad vaccine can be worse than no vaccine. You may actually predispose people to more severe disease.”

About half a dozen dengue vaccines are in development. The first approved vaccine is Dengvaxia, made by French pharmaceutical manufacturer Sanofi Pasteur. The vaccine is built on a “backbone” of the yellow fever virus vaccine, drawing on that shot’s long history of success. In 25 clinical trials involving more than 40,000 participants, protection against dengue ranged from 77 percent against dengue serotype 4, to 43 percent against serotype 2, which is considered the hardest to guard against.

The vaccine is far from ideal. It is only for people ages 9 to 45 in dengue-hit areas. Yet small children bear a huge burden of disease. In Asia, where dengue has a long history, a study published March 24 in the New England Journal of Medicine found 10 percent of all fevers in children ages 2 to 16 were due to dengue; 19 percent of those required hospitalization.

But the vaccine may put some children in danger. In one clinical trial, immunization appeared to increase the risk of younger children going to the hospital for dengue the following year. Writing in the January issue of Nature Reviews Microbiology, Sanofi scientists hypothesized that the immune response from the vaccine mimicked a first infection in some of the littlest patients, predisposing them to the dangers of a second round of illness.

Other vaccines in the pipeline, such as one by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Inviragen (now Takeda Pharmaceuticals), use a weakened form of the four live dengue viruses. In December 2015, researchers writing in the Journal of Infectious Diseases described a human test of the vaccine in Puerto Rico, Colombia, Singapore and Thailand. Among 148 volunteers ages 1 to 45, one or two doses of vaccine produced an immune response against all four types that ranged from 72 to 100 percent protection, based on the level of antibody present in the bloodstream. Even in volunteers who had been infected with dengue in the past, the vaccine did not raise safety concerns.

A dengue vaccine developed at the National Institutes of Health and tested at Johns Hopkins and the University of Vermont is in phase III trials, the last and largest phase of experimental testing. That vaccine is also made from a weakened version of live dengue viruses and requires only one dose. In early studies, the vaccine appeared to confer only weak protection to serotype 2, which might leave a gaping hole in immune defense.

However, a reassuring study was published in March in Science Translational Medicine. Durbin and colleagues gave 21 volunteers the NIH dengue vaccine. Six months later, they gave dengue 2 virus to the vaccinated group, as well as 20 volunteers who were not immunized. None of the vaccinated volunteers showed signs of virus in their blood, or a rash. Yet all 20 unvaccinated volunteers had positive blood tests and 80 percent had a rash. “We knew the dengue 2 component was weaker,” Durbin says. “Our question was, ‘Are we going to protect people from dengue 2?’ Challenge study said ‘yes.’ ”

In the current Zika epidemic, some scientists have theorized that dengue and Zika may be partners in crime, interacting in some way that allows the Zika virus to cross the placenta. For all its mysteries, this much is known: Before the Zika virus arrived in Brazil, it was not known to cause birth defects.

Although Zika virus has caused sporadic outbreaks since the 1940s, starting in Uganda, the numbers were small, and the disease was considered minor. Zika did not become a public health emergency until it crossed the ocean in 2014. Upon reaching Brazil in 2015, the virus spread explosively. It became linked to neurological problems (SN: 4/2/16, p. 29) and tragedies such as microcephaly in newborns (SN: 4/2/16, p. 26). Before Zika, the incidence of microcephaly in Brazil was 0.5 per 10,000 births. Today, the birth defect occurs in 20 of every 10,000 births, although those estimates are inexact because of unclear reporting before Zika.

“We were surprised when we saw what a devastating disease it was,” says Jorge Kalil, director of the Butantan Institute in São Paulo, Brazil’s premier institution for vaccine research and development. “Why do we have it? We still don’t know.”
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6-3-16      http://www.dontcomply.com/forced-vaccines-for-all-students-at-rutgers-university/
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http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/01/27/mercury-in-vaccines-was-replaced-with-something-even-more-toxic.aspx