Informative Essay On Ebola

Ebola is known to be as, “one of the most dangerous viruses the world has ever known” (Weintraub). “No one thought you could protect with a vaccine, because [Ebola] was so aggressive” (Weintraub). The number of Ebola cases from the start of the Ebola outbreak to January 6, 2015 in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, is 20,712. The amount of deaths is 8219 from the 20,712 people (“Case Counts”). Also, there are five known Ebola species, four that can cause sickness in humans. The five known Ebola species are the Zaire, Sudan, Taï Forest (formerly known as the Côte d'Ivoire), Bundibugyo, and the Reston. The Reston virus, does not affect humans, but has caused disease in nonhuman primates (“Ncdhhs Ebola Information”). Although Ebola is a dangerous

President Obama “called on Congress to pass $6.2 billion in emergency funds to fight the virus” (Landler). The funding will help pay for new Ebola treatment centers and put money towards finding a cure (Landler). John Connor a virologist at Boston University School of Medicine’s microbiology lab has been lacking the funds from National Institutes of Health to take the research for a cure for Ebola farther. “The [National Institutes of Health] has been working on a vaccine for the Zaire Ebola virus since 2001. After 13 years of work, it has reached animal trials [, but] when the outbreak began to spread rapidly this summer, the vaccine had not reached a phase [one] clinical trial to be tested on humans. Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the NIH, blamed the cut in research funding for slowing down all [the] research, but especially the development of vaccines for infectious diseases” (Rice). Also, "[it’s] not like we suddenly woke up and thought, “Oh my gosh, we should have something ready here,” " Collins said. If funding hadn't been slipping over the past decade, he said, "we would have been a year or two ahead of where we are, which would have made all the difference"

At “Vaccine Research Center's, Sullivan (a scientist)[,] was able to recruit another of the immune system's foot soldiers—T cells—that she made headway against the virus” (Weintraub). The vaccine she had helped developed uses the virus from chimps which causes no symptoms in humans. Humans carry a harmless bit of protein from the surface of Ebola virus into a lab monkey’s immune system. “ That little bit is enough to trigger the immune system to make antibodies and targeted T cells, which are spread throughout the body, to fight off subsequent infection” (Weintraub). The second well known vaccine has a similar effect, but uses a potentially more effective delivery system to carry the bit of Ebola into the immune system. The Ebola protein is mounted onto a harmless virus—the metaphoric wolf (Ebola) dressed in a sheepskin (another, harmless virus). The lab monkeys have interpreted this as an attack from Ebola and have developed an immune response. "I'm very confident in that vaccine," said Thomas Geisbert, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. "It works fantastically well in monkeys” (Weintraub). The human testing process began in September when healthy American volunteers were injected with Sullivan’s vaccine. Her vaccine is now owned by Pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline