Certain leukaemia drug treatments might stop the Ebola virus developing in the body, according to new US research unveiled on 29 February 2012.
Fatal in all but 10 per cent of cases, Ebola was first identified in Africa around four decades ago. It's comparatively rare but, even so, has come to be regarded as a highly dangerous condition.
However, two leukaemia treatments drugs - imatinib and nilotinib - seem to be able to prevent reproduction of the Ebola virus, according to data released by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and subsequently published by Science Translational Medicine.
Leukaemia Drug Ebola Treatment
The leukaemia drug Ebola treatment findings followed lab-based trials involving embryonic kidney cells, which revealed that the c-Abl1 tyrosine kinase protein was instrumental in the virus replication process. By putting the brakes on this protein's activity, the researchers were able to stop the Ebola from spreading.
Alongside this, the leukaemia drugs also prevented the Ebola-infected cells from releasing viral particles - a mechanism called ‘filovirus budding'.
‘Drugs that target filovirus budding would be expected to reduce the spread of infection, giving the immune system time to control the infection', the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease representatives explained in their report, adding: ‘Our results suggest that short-term administration of nilotinib or imatinib may be useful in treating Ebola virus infections.'
Ebola Virus Treatment Study
Imatinib has several trade names including Glivec and Gleevec and it's prescribed to chronic myelogenous leukaemia patients, while nilotinib, which is marketed as Tasigna, treats the same condition but in cases where imatinib hasn't helped.
Referring to both drugs, the Ebola virus treatment study's authors described their ‘safety profiles' as ‘reasonable' but added: ‘some cardiac toxicity has been reported with long-term administration in a small number of patients.'
Data release by WHO (the World Health Organization reveals that, over the past 36 years, there's been 1,200 fatal cases of Ebola recorded around the world.
At the very end of 2011, Pharma International reported on the development of a
long-lasting effective Ebola vaccine. Prior to that, we covered
MIT's DRACO drug - a product with the potential to kill almost every virus known to man, Ebola included.
Image copyright Public Library of Science - Courtesy Wikimedia Commons
One can only hope that Sean Penn returns to acting duties post haste (
Diplomacy, interrupted, 24 February . The past 30 years of Anglo-Argentine-Falkland relationships are vastly more complicated that Mr Penn might imagine, and his very short introduction to US-UK-Latin American relations during the cold war sounds like it has been extracted from the James Bond film, Quantum of Solace.
While the dispatch of the Duke of Cambridge to the Falklands in the runup to the 30th anniversary of the 1982 conflict was an unfortunate piece of timing, it is nonetheless indicative of a broader truism that the British government has a responsibility to ensure that the Falkland Islands are defended and managed in terms of foreign and security affairs. In the past three decades, apart from the welcome departure of a brutal military regime in Argentina, the most dramatic change has come in the shape of the Falkland Islands community itself, which has effectively transformed itself into a democratic society with a noteworthy portfolio of activities. The Falklands are not a colony in any sense – they are a British overseas territory. Having visited (and researched the islands on many occasions, I was struck by how vigorously the islanders promote their right to self-determination without being dictated to by Argentina, Britain or even Sean Penn.
One aspect often lost is that this disagreement over the Falklands is not just about the Falklands per se. At stake is a series of other disputes involving South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula region. Interestingly, universities and science minister David Willetts was recently in the Antarctic and the Falklands, and I am told there is a striking photo of him standing next to a series of British flags in British Antarctic Territory. For some Argentines at least, removing the British presence from the Falklands is part of a wider strategy to remove Britain from the wider South Atlantic and Antarctic. This is something that needs to be borne in mind when we discuss the Falklands question.
Professor Klaus Dodds
Author of
Pink Ice: Britain and the South Atlantic Empire
• Is it just me or is anyone else getting fed up with what Sean Penn thinks? But at least I must thank him for making me pay attention to what he says. It is worth noting that British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands was re-established in 1833, and in that year the government in the US instigated the Choctaw Trail of Tears, where between 1800 and 1830 the Choctaw nation was forced to cede over 100,000 sq km of their land, according to Wikipedia.
Obviously that is only one example of what happened, as the then US government took whatever it wanted and moved, starved and killed anyone who stood in its way. The indigenous native Americans have more rights to live on their own land than modern-day Argentina has to the Falklands. Perhaps Mr Penn would be willing to give his own property back to whichever tribe occupied the land prior to 1830, and be equally vocal about native American rights as he is about dubious Argentinian claims over the Falkland Islands.
Mike Darby
Shebbear, Devon
• The declaration by 17 leading Argentine intellectuals challenging President Christina Fernandez de Kirchner's demands for sovereignty of the Falkland Islands is a view shared by many people in Argentina at all levels of society despite public criticism of their declaration.
As the BBC Latin America correspondent from 1979 to 1983, I broadcast globally from Buenos Aires the first news of the invasion and I have visited both Argentina and the Falklands many times since, most recently in February this year.
In Argentina, a young, well-educated Argentine businesswoman I met on a Buenos Aires bus was forthright in her view: "You [the British] won the war. You keep the islands!" Her attitude was echoed by a middle-aged entrepreneur in the tourist industry in the far south, in Ushuaia, capital of Tierra del Fuego province, which Argentine law and the constitution bizarrely claim to incorporate the Malvinas (Falklands within its territory.
The businessman told me that many young Argentines are just not interested in the sovereignty dispute. He went on to predict that "the Malvinas dispute will no longer be an issue for newer generations within 30 or 40 years".
I am not convinced of that refreshing scenario, but my experience, canvassing the views of Argentines over the past 30 years, is that younger people are far more concerned with getting a good education and a job, how to enjoy their next free evening and what mobile telephone to buy next. I detect a growing realism and scepticism, especially about the historical falsehoods and misinformation used in support of Argentina's claim. Its exaggerated rhetoric, not least its accusation of UK "militarisation" of the South Atlantic, is proving counterproductive.
Its submissions to the United Nations have been demolished by the UK's robust rebuttal with a detailed factual account of events going back centuries validating British sovereignty. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office seems to be embarked on a more active campaign to correct misconceptions. It is a welcome contrast to the pre-1982 policy of abject surrender of British sovereignty, brought to an abrupt end by Galtieri's invasion.
I agree with much of
Jimmy Burns's open letter to Sean Penn (in the Guardian about the Kirchner presidencies. I was in Argentina when the two rigs arrived to work in Falkland Islands waters. The Kirchners repudiated not only the 1995 oil co-operation agreement but also later agreements, including co-operation on fishing and preservation of stocks – so vital to the Falklands' economy and also important to Argentina's. It is ironic that the Argentines are now arguing that any oil or fishing resources are theirs. In Chile, I heard much criticism of Argentine threats to disrupt the regular commercial air services from Punta Arenas to the Falklands.
Despite intensification of Argentina's economic restrictions, on my most recent visit I found the islanders in good heart and in a much healthier economic and democratic environment than I found in Argentina, which is beset with unrest and demonstrations, widespread crime, poverty and child starvation in a land of plentiful food, and shortages of goods, including even those mobile phones beloved by the young. The shortages are caused by a controversial government's import restrictions, damaging to and criticised by neighbouring countries which support its Malvinas policies. One woman told me she was taking the ferry to Uruguay to buy a replacement iron, and others to buy essential medicinal drugs.
The Falkland Islanders are hard-working and self-reliant, as I found them before 1982, but now enjoying unprecedented prosperity from fishing, wildlife tourism and sheep-farming. Their children enjoy a happy, active life in a virtually crime-free society, with one of the most generous government-financed education systems in the world, up to and beyond university placements in the UK. Why would they want to be part of Argentina?
They are as resolute as ever to embrace self-determination, reject Argentine sovereignty, and remain British, demonstrating by their conduct and their hospitality and support for 1982 taskforce veterans their abiding gratitude for the sacrifices made in their liberation, and for their defence ever since.
Harold Briley
Battle, East Sussex
• While we live in a media world where celebrity endorsement makes newspaper copy, the intervention of an American film actor over the Falkland Islands is little more than an irrelevance. For Sean Penn the space donated by the Guardian has allowed him to compound his impertinence; for the president of Argentina, deploying his support has the smack of desperate measures. At the same time the country's diplomatic corps has embarked on a mission to seek sympathy for its claim to the islands – a neocolonial claim already rejected under international case law, and which ignores the wishes of the population enshrined by the enlightened mores of today.
Argentina would be well advised to change its tack entirely. As a PR professional, my advice to Cristina de Kirchner and her successors is this: be nice. Do everything you can to be a good neighbour: ease communications, travel, transport and trade; encourage educational, sporting and cultural exchange; help make the islands thrive by allowing your citizens to be employed there and providing the services needed by new industries, including fisheries and oil exploration, and thereby share the prosperity and growth; stop the envy, the hurt pride, the propaganda. Within a generation or two, as the islanders see you as a help not a hindrance, a friend not a foe, as your economies grow together and your people intermarry and settle, Argentina will acquire influence and increasing participation in the Falklands at both a human and institutional level.
You have tried belligerence. You are still trying confrontation. Try intelligent integration. It's slower, it's less macho, it's not a distraction from domestic political problems. But it will be effective. No one will be left to lie under a windblown headstone. And it will attract international respect.
James Darley
London
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"In the last 10 years, the number of sanitary and phytosanitary barriers we have had to deal with has increased from roughly 650 to close to 1,500 last year," said Secretary Vilsack during a four hour appropriations hearing on the U.S. Department of Agriculture budget.
Countries that belong to the World Trade Organization manage such disagreements under the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, often called the SPS Agreement. This framework is meant to help iron out trade disputes based on food safety and animal or plant health issues.
"The reality is that when you're the number one country in terms of agriculture and agricultural production and exports, countries find a lot of different ways to make things difficult for you," said Vilsack.
The issue came up when agriculture appropriations subcommittee chairman Representative Jack Kingston (R-GA brought up the fact that India continues to block American poultry exports over pathogen issues. Kingston asked if there was something USDA could do to help open the $300 million poultry market there, something that would help U.S. poultry producers.
"It's very complicated and very frustrating," said Vilsack, adding that the U.S. Trade Representative's office has limited resources to fight what he says are unwarranted agricultural trade barriers.
In 2011, USTR published its second annual "
Report on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures," a 113 page document that outlines existing SPS issues with each U.S. trading partner.
According to USTR, the annual SPS Report was created "to respond to the concerns of U.S. farmers, ranchers, producers and workers who are running into SPS trade barriers as they seek to export high?quality American agricultural products around the world."
U.S. trade officials are working on a number of SPS issues that limit agricultural exports, including trade bans on genetically engineered crops, and "unreasonable" residue limits for pesticides in a variety of commodities.
Many countries, including China, also still have restrictions in place out of concern for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, otherwise known as BSE, or "mad cow" disease, and USTR works to eliminate such barriers, arguing that they are not based on science.
Food safety interventions can become SPS issues as well.
Russia continues to ban U.S. poultry over the widespread use of chlorine as a disinfectant during processing, even though USDA public health officials maintain that it completely safe. The European Union has banned chlorine baths for poultry since 1997.
One of the most high-profile and longest-running SPS disputes started in the late 1980s when the United States and EU battled over the use of certain growth-promoting hormones in beef production. The EU banned the practice, citing concerns about health risks, and refused to import beef raised using the drugs. The United States challenged the restriction arguing that it was not based on scientific evidence.
In 1998, a WTO panel found that the EU's ban was not supported by science and therefore was not consistent with its obligation under the SPS Agreement. The EU refused to change its policy. For the next decade, the United States raised import duties on a number of EU products, including chocolate, truffles and cheeses.
In May 2009, the United States and the EU concluded a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU that, according to USTR, "has enabled U.S. producers to gain additional duty?free access to the EU market for high?quality beef produced from U.S. cattle that have not received growth?promoting hormones."
In May 2011, the United States announced that it would drop all remaining punitive duties on EU goods in exchange for greater duty-free access for beef raised without additional hormones.
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