Breaking News: ”ZMapp Serum” The
Alleged Cure For Ebola Is Gotten From
Rats
According to CNN Two American
missionary workers infected with the
deadly Ebola virus were given an
experimental drug that
seems to have saved their lives.
Dr. Kent Brantly was given the
medication, ZMapp, shortly after telling
his doctors he thought he would die,
according to a source familiar with his
case. Within an hour, doctors say his
symptoms — labored breathing and a
widespread rash — dramatically
improved. Nancy Writebol, another
missionary working with Samaritan’s
Purse, received two doses of the
medication and has also shown
significant improvement, sources say.
As there is no proven treatment and no
vaccine for Ebola, this experimental
drug is raising lots of questions.
What is ZMapp and How does it work?
Rats (Mice) where Exposed to Ebola to
Generate ”Antibodies” These are
proteins Generally used by our
immune
system to mark and destroy foreign, or
harmful, cells. A monoclonal antibody
is
similar, except it’s engineered in a lab
so it will attach to specific parts of a
dangerous cell, according to the Mayo
Clinic, mimicking your immune system’s
natural response. Monoclonal
antibodies are used to treat many
different types of conditions.
This medicine is a three-mouse
monoclonal antibody, meaning that
mice
were exposed to fragments of the
Ebola
virus and then the antibodies
generated within the mice’s blood were
harvested to create the medicine. The
Drug Literally Prevents Virus from
Making New Cells.
Did doctors know it would work?
No. The drug had shown promise in
primates, but even in those
experiments, just eight monkeys
received the treatment. In any case,
the human immune system can react
differently than primates’, which is why
drugs are required to undergo human
clinical trials before being approved by
government agencies for widespread
use.
The two Americans’ cases will be
studied further to determine how the
drug worked with their immune
systems.
Will the drug be made available to
other
Ebola patients?
It’s unclear. Doctors “cannot start
using
untested drugs in the middle of an
outbreak, for various reasons,” World
Health Organization spokesman
Gregory
Hartl said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the
National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases, says scientists
have to be careful about assuming this
drug will work in other patients as it
appears to have worked in Brantly.
“Having worked with administering
antibodies for people for a really long
time, that would be distinctly unusual,”
he told CNN. “As we all know in
medicine
… you have to withhold judgment.”
Does the company have more vials of
the drug?
The company has very few doses ready
for patient use, Fauci told CNN.
“Apparently the company is trying to
scale up, (but) it’s not easy to scale up
to very large number of doses.”
Would this drug stop the Ebola
epidemic?
If it were widely available, it certainly
couldn’t hurt. An effective Ebola drug
could help doctors treat the deadly
virus, which is killing about 60% of the
people infected in West Africa. But a
vaccine would be a much more
effective
tool in stopping this, and future,
epidemics.
Vaccines are given to healthy people to
prevent them from ever becoming
infected. One challenge with Ebola,
experts say, is that companies don’t
believe they could make much money
from developing a vaccine, so few
companies show interest.
CURLED FROM GIST FOR TODAY

That means a typical TIV man can not be infected with Ebola, because they eat alot of mice.