because this disease is so predominantly in Africa, there will be nothing done by big pharma - disgusting, true and immoral.

This disease is so scary that every suburbanite with zero chance of exposure is going to line up for the jab just because there are a handful of cases in the country.

They'll be hard pressed to make enough to get to a few people in West Africa.

create, and a long time to test and approve.

Can you think of any virus feared for years by rich Westerners that still has no vaccine? I sure can.

It kills more people each year in the U.S. than Ebola ever will. There's a treatment now, but it's unaffordable for most people who have Hep C. And then there's HIV? No vaccine for that yet, either. How many has HIV killed now? Ebola is a minor risk in the United States. It will continue to be such.

And forget the US, HIV is the number one cause of death in Africa, more than 70% of the people living with HIV are in Africa and 2011 shows 1.2 million HIV deaths in Africa, 12,000 in North America.

It's good to have some scale here. Vaccines are difficult to create, difficult to test, and difficult to produce in quantities that would be sufficient. Since we haven't succeeded with Hep C and HIV, what makes people think an Ebola vaccine is some sort of easy job?

Personally, I find it upsetting when people make assumptions about why there is no vaccine for certain diseases. While they blame a lack of money as the reason, they appear to be forgetting that anyone who comes up with a viable HIV vaccine or one for Hepatitis C will find a marketplace that is eager to buy those. That seems obvious. And yet, no vaccine that works is available, despite major efforts to develop vaccines for both of those viruses.

Ebola, too. People have been trying to find a working vaccine for Ebola for a long time. Frankly the team that develops a vaccine for any of the three viruses I mentioned will end up with a Nobel Prize in medicine and the company that makes any of those vaccines will make a pantload of money.

No research? That's nonsense. The research continues and has continued for quite a long time on all of those and many other deadly or epidemic viral diseases.

Some use incorrect information to blame one reason or another for the failure to develop these life-saving vaccines. If those people would actually go and look to see how many people are working on such vaccines, they wouldn't speak so quickly.

knowledge. Fear and denial were very popular in the days when many were dying of HIV/AIDS and our science knew almost nothing and our government utterly ignored it. But at that time we had actual lack of knowledge, thousands of deaths and actual government apathy and inaction. By comparison, the US reaction to ebola has been pretty great, even in Africa, where, by comparison, we did nothing with HIV for many extra years because Reagan did nothing at home.

See this link:
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/ebolamarburg/research/pages/default.aspx

Also, Google Ebola Vaccine Research for information on actual research that is going on.

A Canadian effort is about to ship an experimental vaccine right now. Link:
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-29680393

See, the thing is that if you rely on advocacy websites for information, you may not get actual facts, but advocacy.

Go do the Google search, and then look at actual information rather than opinion. People have been working on a vaccine for Ebola, along with the Marburg virus and one for Lassa fever. You can find actual information if you actually search for it. Or you can find claims by advocacy websites that say no research is happening. It's up to you to decide whether you want biased opinion or fact.

Me? I prefer factual information.

I wish there were more like you on this site. Far too many are content to find any wild opinion and run with it, rather than take the time to check it out.

Thanks for the effort you put into providing useful information.

we may see advances toward treatments.

A vaccine, the world is your customer stock and a constantly refreshing stock at that. A vaccine never stops selling.

what happened to that bill?

Until the Teabaggers and other GOP-ers cut their funding, that is. Had they not done so, it would likely be in production by now.

It's simply inexcusable.

That's just the nature of the Capitalist system. The situation won't change unless and until we develop alternate methods. For example, what if the Veteran's Administration and/or Medicare contracted to have some of the vital generics made whenever they're n short supply?

There have been pre-attempts, but the reality is that no vaccine could be tested, because there were so few human cases. So the research was just taken to a certain level and then kind of held.

You really can only prepare and test vaccines for illnesses that have a certain residual level of human infections. When "large" outbreaks occur years and perhaps a decade apart, and consist of under 500 cases, there's no way to even test a vaccine. When they occur sporadically, from different viruses, and in different geographic settings, there's no way to predict an outbreak to test efficacy. Any attempt to do so would be unethical.

How could any regulatory agency approve a vaccine without proof that it works? What would be the point? Vaccines have to be given to a large group of people to work, and all vaccines carry some risk of adverse effects to their recipients. You are not going to inoculate millions of people for a disease that might kill 200 people in five years, because you'd create more harm to humans than possible benefit. Instead public health measures against Ebola have concentrated on an effective early response to outbreaks.

Obviously now that has changed. There are already experimental vaccines. From WHO:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/ebola/01-october-2014/en/

They'll probably be first tested on HCW, who can knowledgeably assent and are at high risk if working in the affected areas.

Until you had something like we have now, you could never have a commercial vaccine.

back in July, Sierra Leone's Dr. Sheik Humarr Khan, who was one of the most dedicated experts on hemorrhagic illnesses in Africa, was felled by ebola. At the time, one of the companies working on the Zmapp treatment drug contacted his physicians at Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) and offered them some of the very small quantity of the drug that they had hand. (Zmapp is the treatment drug that was eventually given to Dr. Brantly, among a handful of other patients in different countries. Some of the patients who received it lived and some died anyway.)

After extensive discussion, MSF decided not to accept the drug, which had shown promise on monkeys in an early 2014 study. Why? Because it could not have been given to a human up until that point, and they were concerned that it might make things worse.

Science doesn't happen in sound bites.

in these types of situations and that the research and funding depended upon funding and approval from within the government. The problem is that the first dose of vaccine is the most expensive because that comes from all the time and energy spent getting it approved. If there is no need for it, then it would sit on a shelf with maybe a limited supply (vaccines I do believe can expire if they are too old).

I agree a vaccine would have probably helped, but I think ebola has been contained enough (outside of Africa) that it is not a problem. We now need to focus on Africa where it is still a problem.

TB kills twice as many.

The takeaway here isn't that "greedy corporations are sitting on a vaccine" but that "there are finite resources that can be devoted to much more serious problems".

And, anyways, an ebola vaccine would make a ton of money. But a cheap, portable malaria prophylaxis and/or treatment would save a lot more lives.

Tell the MIC that they can bomb parts of Africa if they make sure to include an Ebola vaccine, then give them free reign to bomb anywhere, as long as it includes an Ebola vaccine. They'll be itching do it then.

No, that wouldn't work. They can already bomb whoever the hell they want without the international community doing anything about it and without any requirements. Just think, the cost of one bomb could probably fund research enough to make a vaccine really quick. There is always enough money for bombs. Health care? Safety and wellbeing of citizens? Nope. They have been siphoning money from the helpful stuff for more bombs than we can ever drop and to line the pockets of the companies attached to the MIC for ages now.

creates demand.

they take on needed projects that aren't economically profitable.
Damn Republicans can't seem to grasp this fact.

to the first drug company to come up with a working vaccine?

Trials advertised here: http://www.rescuepost.com/.a/6a00d8357f3f2969e201bb079b71c5970d-500wi
Source: http://www.ageofautism.com/2014/10/will-tyrants-and-kings-test-the-ebola-vaccine.html

More: http://medschool.umaryland.edu/CVD/Volunteers/