Same as the media. Ebola stories are gold and government agencies are going to be using it to gain funding too.

Do you know of any other way?

There's been less than 5 cases of Ebola in the US ever (and none before 30 days ago) and I'm fairly sure the bureaucrats would have spent the money on something else.

This may not be a popular opinion, but IMO, the NIH should be focused on making the lives of Americans better as a priority. Now if they benefit as a side effect of making the U.S. a better place, then that's a good thing.

Some had gone through animal trials (with promising results, I believe). So while it might not be possible to develop vaccines for all diseases, in case of Ebola, it certainly appears to be possible and likely.

Ebola Reston strain received it's name because it was discovered in Reston Virginia which kinda freaked some folks out at first because Reston Virginia is in the states and so close to DC. But it seemed to only kill a warehouse filled with crab-eating monkeys and never once infected a single human being.

So the concept that it works on animals means nothing since Ebola is very species specific. It sounds nice to hear about this 'great progress' but in the end you don't find cures or vaccines for Ebola - you isolate and wait for it to die out and go away. Because it's not an airborne virus and if you handle it right it shouldn't cause a mass blowout.

I am not following what you are saying here at ll.
There are promising vaccines that now reached human trials step.
Which is how all vaccines are developed and tested.
Do you know of any other way?
As for isolation, it hadn't worked in West Africa.
Which is why vaccines are desperately needed there.

They don't have enough supplies and the hospital workers are getting sick themselves. If you look at the other outbreaks of Ebola - these were smaller populations, there was never more than a handful that was infected, maybe a few that got over 100. Those were populations that were much easier to control. But this time Ebola got into the major cities and that is causing the havoc. The family members want to help their families that are sick and they too then get sick. There aren't enough supplies to go around to protect the doctors.

Wasting time on vaccines could take awhile - we need to get more hazmat suits over there, more sanitation efforts. This has worked in the pass but with the number of people sick the doctors are not able to keep up with the sick.

And again, knowing that Ebola is very animal specific I'm not too sure I want to be the human guinea pig for testing the Ebola vaccine.

Its ability to evolve and thus evade body defenses is on a scale of influenza viruses and thus has presented the ultimate challenge in creating a comprehensive effective vaccine.

Ebola is quite different. I mean no insult, but you really should seek information from virologists in the field, not from other lay "scientists" pundits on the tv.

There are already vaccines for Ebola that reached the stage of human trials.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ebola-outbreak-1st-human-trials-of-canadian-vaccine-start-in-u-s-1.2796859

"You can't just give it out," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "You have to determine if it works. That will likely take place in the first quarter of 2015."

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ebola-vaccine-being-tested-in-rapid-fashion-say-researchers/

Clinical trials are now starting for an experimental made-in-Canada Ebola vaccine in what Health Minister Rona Ambrose calls “promising and hopeful news” in the fight against the deadly disease.

The first phase of the clinical trial will test the vaccine on a small group of healthy people to assess its safety, help determine proper dosage levels to give people immunity, and identify any side effects.

Part of a process Ambrose said is moving “an unprecedented speeds,” results of the first phase are expected by December, and the hope is the vaccine can be deployed shortly after.

Thousands have died in West Africa during the ongoing Ebola outbreak. “If the Ebola vaccine is shown to be safe and effective, it will stop this devastating outbreak,” Ambrose said.

Ambrose said the vaccine has been “100 per cent effective” in preventing the spread of the Ebola virus when tested on animals.

<snip>

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/10/13/canadianmade_ebola_vaccine_to_start_clinical_trials_in_humans.html

The NIH director is not just running his mouth.
There is a number of vaccines proven effective in animals that are going to human trials.
I think this guy knows what he is talking about.

Ebola only pops up every once in a while and tends to burn out fairly quickly, which makes it more difficult to develop vaccines/treatment. If there is nobody currently infected to test it on, then it's hard to ensure that it works, right?

Exerimental medications like Zmapp are for treating those already infected.

For instance, Rabies vaccine is given to already infected individuals before they start showing symptoms, and it's highly effective.

Generally, though, vaccines are used pre-infection as inoculating agents.

and was easier to find the host animal to create the vaccine from it.

If anything I find it a waste of money to even research money on this virus. It's an exotic and if it was handled better over in West Africa it wouldn't have been an issue. Look at the history of the outbreak - most of the time doctors got in there, isolated the sick and in the end maybe a handful of people died and the virus went away.

So why would we want to spend billions of dollars on research on vaccines and treatment? What we need to spend that money on is Hazmat suits and better sanitation so we can stop the spread over in West Africa and get this thing to die out and go away. That's how you stop Ebola. Simple common sense.

Exotic virus?
HIV was an exotic virus once. Not so exotic anymore, is it?
Isolation is not working in West Africa.
If it was handled better in Africa-well, what if money grew on trees? Wouldn't that be nice?

And I know a bit more about virus than you think.

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/history/chronology.html

Other than this last outbreak, Ebola has never taken more than 500 lives at on outbreak. That's because the best treatment for Ebola is to get in there, isolate the sick and the virus runs its course and go away. They have known about this virus since 1976, I highly doubt they have spent much money on Ebola vaccines as they would something like HIV which has killed way way more people.

The money should be spent on treating people over in Africa and prevent it's spread. The virus goes away and we move on. That's how Ebola works. I'm just saying that the NIH demanding money for a vaccine seems to be a waste when the money would be better served going over to West Africa to help with treatment over there. I'm not saying we should deny funding. I'm just saying we should do smart funding which is help in Africa. The reason this outbreak is bad is because it got into the major population areas.

earlier this month. NIH would have been much further along in the vaccine production process right now if there had been more funding.

)Ostensibly to have antidotes and vaccines if some other country uses bio-weapons. Well and good, name one antidote or vaccine that has come from a U.S. bio-weapons lab.

before this latest outbreak, though, but reveal it now, only after Americans became infected, they would be roundly and deservedly castigated for not releasing it in time to treat/vaccinate West Africans.

What if the US bio-weapons program has to keep it secret (for obvious reasons) that, Zmapp for instance, or one of the Ebola vaccines we are now hearing about, was actually produced in a bio-weapon lab and released to a contract company to produce. We'd never know then, whether it was originally discovered in a bio-lab, but releasing it through a private company would prevent any such castigation for a delayed release. Just a thought...

an oppositions inventory.

military, since it's so rare, but we got one made due to bioweapons research.

vaccine research. The difference is important.

i see no reason scientifically or pragmatically to see how he is wrong.

hiv is not ebola, and we do have vaccines for other viruses.

".....Most of the time with a Virus all you can do is hope for the best that it stops causing havoc and go away. Exotic Viruses like Ebola are extremely rare because to find a vaccine you need to find the host animal......."

That second sentence doesn't make any sense at all. And one need not locate the NATURAL RESERVOIR SPECIES in order to PRODUCE a vaccine. Do you truly not understand that vaccines are PRODUCED in a LABORATORY and not "found" or "discovered"???

Oy vey. I am guessing you have no formal education in virology.

We don't have a vaccine yet because until this West African epidemic, Ebola was a rare aka "orphan" disease, so there was no epidemiologic or financial rationale for producing one. But now there is.

You are correct in your saying: " The best place to fight Ebola is over in West Africa and the best way to fight it is to send money and trained professionals over there to take care of the sick properly to ensure that no one else gets infected and the virus dies out."

We need a safe effective vaccine for the medical workers first, so they can safely treat patients. Then we need to embark on a mass vaccination campaign in the worst hit areas. Tried and true methods of Ebola control will help with this: contact tracing and isolation. But really the approach must be multi-pronged.

From what I have also read about Ebola is that the best way to find the vaccine is to find the original host animal because in that host animal is natural immunity to the virus that obviously humans do not have. This virus was just lying about on the ground waiting for someone to pick it up - it was residing on another species of animal and jumped species. The original host - probably bat, was immune to the virus and the virus was dormant in it. Finding the host species would give researchers a jumpstart on understanding how to create the vaccine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_reservoir

I couldn't think of the term, it has been awhile but it is Natural Reservoir. But it is from the DNA/RNA of a host species, which is immune to the virus in question, that can lead researches towards a vaccine for viruses. I'm not saying that it cannot be done without it - but the host species does give us clues as to why it can carry the virus with no issues yet another species can break out with some rare exotic raging disease.

Just curious! Maybe you work there. I am a footnote person.