longbrained
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From New York Times:
Leishmaniasis: Extend Friendly American Hand to Iran? Doctor Says a Vaccine Is a Place to Start
By: Dr Donal McNeil
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/h...-to-iran-oner-leishmaniasis-vaccine.html?_r=1
A leading tropical medicine researcher has proposed that the United States extend a friendly hand to Iran not over nuclear weapons or oil or Israel or Iraq, but over vaccines.
Dr. Peter J. Hotez, chief of the pediatric tropical medicine section at Baylor College of Medicine, recently published an article in Miller-McCune, a public policy magazine, recalling a little-known joint venture between the United States and the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War: The oral polio vaccine developed by Dr. Albert Sabin, above, which is still used in the drive to wipe out polio, was first tested on Russian children.
The injected vaccine of his rival, Dr. Jonas Salk, already dominated the American market, so in 1956 Dr. Sabin talked the Soviets into making his vaccine. It ultimately proved far more effective and easier to use than Salks.
Iran makes basic childhood vaccines and is struggling to make one against leishmaniasis, a sandfly-borne disease that caused the painful Baghdad boil that afflicted the first American troops in Iraq and, if left untreated, eventually can kill.
A good leishmaniasis vaccine could protect millions of people in very poor countries, the Iranians could use American expertise, and good will might ensue, Dr. Hotez argued.
He sees similar opportunities for collaboration with Cubas medical establishment, which makes a meningococcal vaccine against strains of the disease common in Latin America.
I know most people think this is totally out there, Dr. Hotez said in an e-mail. But I believe this could make a difference.
By: New York Times
Leishmaniasis: Extend Friendly American Hand to Iran? Doctor Says a Vaccine Is a Place to Start
By: Dr Donal McNeil
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/h...-to-iran-oner-leishmaniasis-vaccine.html?_r=1
A leading tropical medicine researcher has proposed that the United States extend a friendly hand to Iran not over nuclear weapons or oil or Israel or Iraq, but over vaccines.
Dr. Peter J. Hotez, chief of the pediatric tropical medicine section at Baylor College of Medicine, recently published an article in Miller-McCune, a public policy magazine, recalling a little-known joint venture between the United States and the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War: The oral polio vaccine developed by Dr. Albert Sabin, above, which is still used in the drive to wipe out polio, was first tested on Russian children.
The injected vaccine of his rival, Dr. Jonas Salk, already dominated the American market, so in 1956 Dr. Sabin talked the Soviets into making his vaccine. It ultimately proved far more effective and easier to use than Salks.
Iran makes basic childhood vaccines and is struggling to make one against leishmaniasis, a sandfly-borne disease that caused the painful Baghdad boil that afflicted the first American troops in Iraq and, if left untreated, eventually can kill.
A good leishmaniasis vaccine could protect millions of people in very poor countries, the Iranians could use American expertise, and good will might ensue, Dr. Hotez argued.
He sees similar opportunities for collaboration with Cubas medical establishment, which makes a meningococcal vaccine against strains of the disease common in Latin America.
I know most people think this is totally out there, Dr. Hotez said in an e-mail. But I believe this could make a difference.
By: New York Times
