*new* 13 Nov new Frontline documentary on Ebola, filmed in 3D http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/ebola-outbreak/
10Nov and so perfect for this week & our videos! Science Doesn’t Work the Way People Think It Does http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/11/science-doesnt-work-the-way-you-think-it-does/414744/
Ebola’s Immune Escape The virus can persist in several tissues where the immune system is less active. Researchers are working to better understand this phenomenon and how it can stall the clearing of Ebola in survivors. http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/44403/title/Ebola-s-Immune-Escape/
Microbesity Obesity appears linked to the gut microbiome. How and why is still a mystery—but scientists have plenty of ideas. http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/44300/title/Microbesity/
New Clues Into Ebola as Ill Nurse Improves - NYTimes.com http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/world/europe/new-clues-into-ebola-as-ill-nurse-improves.html?nlid=25414714&src=recpb&referer=In Ancient DNA, Evidence of Plague Much Earlier Than Previously Known - NYTimes.com http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/23/science/in-ancient-dna-evidence-of-plague-much-earlier-than-previously-known.html
The New York Times article I found to be especially interesting was, "New Clues Into Ebola as Ill Nurse Improves". I find it shocking that the doctors weren't following up with Ms. Cafferkey, more consistently after being infected with such a serious virus we don't seem to know much about. The article mentions that her becoming sick after the Ebola virus seem to be cured isn't shocking. Scientist discovered, during a case of Ebola they were studying in monkeys, that after the monkeys were infected with the virus and they began to recover, two to three weeks after infection, the monkeys showed signs of neurological disease. The virus was found in the brains and other organs of the monkey that aren't typically infected by Ebola. So although the number of animals affected was so small, the scientist still should have taken it more seriously. Even if the virus didn't show up for 9 months in Ms. Cafferkey case, it's better to be save then sorry with such a serious disease, that we still have so much to learn about.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Chrissy, the nurses should've followed up with Ms. Cafferkey. They knew that moneys infected with ebola had signs of a neurological disease. Having known that information they should've ran multiple check ups on Ms. Cafferkey to be sure that she didn't have that disease.
DeleteI understand where you are coming from with your argument, but I believe that the nurse contracted meningitis due to a lack of cooperation of the scientists testing the drug used to treat the Ebola virus instead of the doctors treating her. The scientists didn't share their data in its entirety, so the doctors weren't aware of the consequences that could follow treatment with this drug. They even state in the article that the scientists are currently compiling their observations. I'm more upset that the scientists are just now recording their experimental observations. When I am performing an experiment in the laboratory, the observations of the experiment are recorded during the procedure of the experiment.These people are testing a drug that is supposed to go into people and help cure them of an illness, so you would think they would take their experiments more seriously,
DeleteI agree they definitely should have followed up on the nurse later especially with such a potentially dangerous disease such as Ebola. Like Chrissy said it really is better to be safe rather than sorry in these situations. Is is why increased funding of medical research is needed to be be able to find new treatments to the resilient viruses in the world today. As said, the doctors knew that the trail with the monkeys had hit a setback put they used the treatment any way and that is likely what lead to the neurological problems for Mrs. Cafferkey. If they had more funding that possibly could have found another successful treatment for the Ebola virus and the situation could have been avoided. The greater immunity of these viruses will become a problem medicine will have to find a solution to but they could be seen as an added pressure that could rush results and comprise the integrity of scientific investigations.
DeleteThe article about Pauline Cafferkey, the nurse infected with Ebola after volunteering in Sierra Leone, helped me to understand how devastating the Ebola virus can be. After being treated for the virus, Ms. Cafferkey was inflicted with meningitis which is an infection of the protective meninges (or coverings) of the brain. What is even more unsettling is that while scientists were studying the effectiveness of the drug used to treat the Ebola virus on monkeys, they observed that the monkeys also became ill from neurological diseases and traces of the Ebola virus were found in the brain and other organs that were abnormal targets for the virus to attack. However, because of the rarity and small number of afflicted cases, these trials and possible side effects were not reported. I really don't understand why even though it was a small number of the subjects tested, the scientists didn't report these findings and continue their studies to understand why this happens and also challenge other scientists to recreate their experiment and theorize why this is happening in certain cases. By reporting these results, the physicians treating Ms. Cafferkey could have been more prepared to prevent her from contracting meningitis and furthermore, physicians dealing with other patients suffering from Ebola will be able to screen and perform other preventative measures to stop the contraction of meningitis. The bottom line is:scientists observing results during experimentation need to include every observation no matter how small because, especially in this case, it could cost someone their life.
ReplyDeleteI agree Ms. Rasche, it is extremely unsettling that scientists have the capabilities to find the effectiveness of this drug and can see that it has a negative effect on primates, but still somehow do not report this to others. Scientists and medical specialists should continue studies and trials to understand and come to a conclusion on the performance of medicine to ensure safety to the individuals who will possibly need it.
DeleteI agree. Unfortunately there are mistakes in science. A lot of scientific knowledge is gained from mistakes though some may be devistating. Learning from mistakes can be a vehicle to progress f the information is utilized well. It's sad to hear a story about this nurse especially since she was a volunteer trying to help those in need of aid.
DeleteI totally agree with you Denise! It's ridiculous that these scientists aren't recording the observations. This disease is pretty serious, and there could be more cases out there that never knew they were infected. It's something in science that needs to be improved, that no matter how little the observations are you need to record them because any little thing could help at this point.
DeleteAfter reading both articles concerning the news of Ebola, brings attention to the medical community that this war isn’t over. We might have won the battle but not the war. The Ebola virus is both amazing and terrifying. It is amazing because it can sneak into organs and lay dormant there, hiding from the immune system, for months on end. That is until an inflammatory response is detected by the immune system and then all hell breaks loose again, for say. That is also why Ebola is terrifying. It can hide in organs like: testes, placenta, brain, and the eyes. As for the nurse, Ms. Cafferkey for became critically ill with meningitis, as a result of previously having Ebola. Her blood test and spinal fluid tested positive for Ebola, proving that this monster of a virus has the potential to up root and cause havoc on the body.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I think its scary that Ebola can remain dormant and infect people months after initial infection. This virus is very advanced and anyone who has been infected should be closely monitored.
DeleteOne thought I forgot to include, this reminds me of chicken pox for example. Once you have had the chicken pox then the shingles virus is already inside of you. Shingles can lay dormant for a life time or be exposed as an adult when the body is under extreme stress and the immune system is weakened. Another thought, my mom had a cold a while ago, the cold went away. no problems. But one day she woke up and her knee was swollen, inflamed and tender to touch. She called her physician and they said that some colds travel to joints and attack the joint, causing her symptoms. The treatment was a steroid shot, ice, and rest. It is amazing how these viruses can travel in our body and cause havoc else where.
ReplyDeleteI really liked how you compared fighting the Ebola virus to fighting in a war. I think it fits the current situation perfectly, in where we are in the process of finding a cure for the virus. Although scientist and doctors are making progress with the virus, and finding a cures it is important to keep in mind that these are just some steps in the progress, that the 'war' is not over.
DeleteI enjoyed the comparison of the spreading of ebola with the spreading of the flu and that it can hide in the darkness parts of the bodies organs while it rebuild and become immune to the treatment until it is ready to attack the host.
DeleteFrom reading the article of Ms. Cafferkey and her unfortunate illness that came over her after already overcoming the Ebola virus shows how new developing viruses can affect the human body and how many questions it can bring up in medical terms. Was the Ebola virus really gone and out of her body? Is the Meningitis she developed directly connected to the Ebola virus? And even though the case count is rare and abnormal, wouldn't doctors and medical specialists want to take a deeper look into why this is happening to Ms. Cafferkey? By skipping over extra precautions, it leaves the chance for an individual to suffer greatly.
ReplyDeleteI agree the article leaves many questions to be answered. What is hard for me to understand is that no one had any idea that the nurse was developing meningitis. With Ebola being such a serious disease the doctor's should have been monitoring the nurse and caught the meningitis virus before it even developed into something serious.
DeleteI agree with you that not monitoring a disease like this closely can have disastrous effects for the patient. I also think that the concept of viruses hiding out in your body is kind of eerie, especially when we do not know much about the virus of topic. The positive thing is that tests are showing that the virus tends to decrease over time, so the body is fighting it, but it just takes longer to reach those lower immune areas.
DeleteI agree that a patient should be monitored furthermore even after overcoming a virus like Ebola. This is a somewhat new virus and we dont exaclty know everything about it so i believe people need to be closely monitored even after they beat it. Its scary that the Ebola virus can hide out in your body, the human body does fight off Ebola over time naturally but the problem is keeping the human alive long enough for the body to fight it off. I really wonder if the meningitis Ms. Cafferkey developed doe shave a link to the Ebola virus, this is interesting because maybe certain viruses or disease can lead to other illnesses especially with a weakened immune system.
DeleteFor the ebola patient that discovered she had menijitis 9 months after they thought she was cured from the disease, I agree with most in saying that the doctors should have checked into her case more frequently. Granted she had very good health care in London but all survivors from the ebola virus should be watched with a close eye. We do not know much about the lasting effects of the virus so doctors should be monitoring their previous patients. This reminds me of when some of my family members had cancer. They got diagnosed then treated and some went into remission. However, with recovering cancer patients and people who have cancer run in their family need to get checked annually or even more frequent. There is also a very great risk for the cancer to come back if one has had it before. Cancer can be very aggressive if not caught in time and I think that is the case with the patient's situation in this article. She needs to be treated as a person with a previous life threatening illness and the doctors should take the necessary precautions to help her stay in good health or if they discover any more changes in her body over time.
ReplyDeleteSarah, I also agreed that doctors should be regularly checking up on recovering ebola patients, even if they look as if they have been completely cured of the disease. I can also relate to what you said about someone in your family getting cancer. My sister had thyroid cancer when she was 17 years old and now at the age of 31, she continues to go back for an annual check up every year as her doctor advised her to do. I think the reason doctors are not doing this with recovering ebola patients is because they dont know much about the disease and dont know how it would come back if it looks as if the patient is completely cured.
Deletehttp://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/08/05/428925801/hiv-prevention-pill-remains-a-tough-sell-among-gay-latinos
ReplyDeleteBig apologies to Austin for doubting him! Here's another article:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/upshot/is-truvada-the-pill-to-prevent-hiv-99-percent-effective-dont-be-so-sure.html?_r=0
I also happen to be having a dinner discussion about global ethics tonight with some medical folks, so I'll ask them as well.
This was an interesting read! What I gathered, was that this drug Truvada has a very high likely hood of prevent the spread of HIV. But the issue that the people who take it must take it everyday and be consistent in taking the drug otherwise it increases the risk of contracting HIV. The other flaw in the study was that the population in which the study took place was too small and a lot of the variables weren't able to be controlled. For example, researchers couldn't make the participants take the drug, some participants wore condoms, and number of sexual partners. Overall medicine has made headlines in HIV prevention.
DeleteI read the earlier article about the drug and was somewhat confused this helped to clear up the confusion, Thanks I like that the medical professionals are trying to educate people that the new drug exist and the it is very successful in the prevention of HIV. This type of communication about new research in the field of medicine and really scientific findings in general need to continue. I agree Lauren the study sample size was very small and their were a number of variables that were not controlled and that question the reliability of the study results regarding the new drug. That being said the cost for these life-saving medicines (HIV can lead to AIDS which is a very deadly disease) should be lower to ensure equal access to the medication so that it can reach all those exposed to the risk.
DeleteI found the first article New Clues Into Ebola as Ill Nurse Improves very interesting as well. It was surprising to me that the doctors weren't doing follow up appointments and monitoring any changes the nurse may have been experiencing., especially when she was being treated with an experimental antiviral compound. With How powerful of a disease Ebola is and how little is known about it its surprising the doctor wouldn't have wanted to monitor it to develop their knowledge on the disease for future patients who may experience the same illness. Hopefully next time the doctors will take proper steps to making sure no other patients develop different viruses.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on everything you said above. For any serious virus they should do routine check ups no matter what. Especially for a virus that isn't that well known!
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DeleteI agree with you that with diseases as serious as these, doctors should be forced to have multiple post examinations of patients who have been thought to have recovered from the disease. One main reason for this can be found in the article 'Ebola's Immune Escape' which says that Ebola cells can lie dormant in tissues of the body that have lax immune responses. If doctors do not regularly check for signs of the disease's return, the patient could be at extreme risk.
DeleteThe article that i found most interesting was the New clues into Ebola as Ill nurse improves. The one thing that was very shocking to me was how the doctors weren't checking up on Ms. Cafferkey even after she had been cured from Ebola. Ebola is not something that everyone gets so i don't get why the doctors wouldn't have been doing check ups to learn more about Ebola after Ms. Cafferkey was cured from it. Ebola is a serious virus so we need to be doing anything and everything to learn more about the disease. The doctors made a mistake by not checking up on her after she was cured and im sure that this mistake will never happen again in the medical field.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on this one Sawyer, as well as just about everyone else. It is mind-boggling to think that the doctors didnt foresee any infection that may have entered Ms. Cafferkey. With how the media and science perceive Ebola, you would think that the doctors would have more awareness to contain any possible threats to the health of others. This incident jeopardizes the reputation of science ethics as seen by the general population. You can mark this one up as a loss for science, safety, and health.
DeleteThe article i found very interesting is the "New Clues into Ebola as III Nurse Improves". I wasn't surprised when they said Mrs. Cafferkey became infected with another disease after she "recovered" from Ebola. They talk about how they shouldn't have been surprised of her illness because in the case of observing infected macaques, they monkeys seemed to be recovering well until two to three weeks later when they appeared to be deteriorating and show signs of neurological disease. This tell me that doctors need to be keeping a very close eye on anyone who has been infected with he ebola virus even when they seem to have completely recovered instead of just forgetting about them and moving onto the next infected patient.
ReplyDeleteKirsta, I agree. I would like to know why the doctors didn't keep a closer eye on her and monitor her recovery. Then again, in humans the doctors might not have known that Ebola can cross the blood- brain barrier. Even with the example of the monkey case. But either way, the virus is still so new and not much knowledge is known unfortunately.
DeleteIn the first article "Ebola's Immune Escape," I think the concept that Ebola can lie dormant in several tissues where the immune system is less active is pretty scary. Not only do we not have a cure yet, but those few that do combat the disease have to worry about it potentially resurfacing sometime in the future. However it was said that although these hideouts for dormant Ebola cells seem distressing, a study of Ebola persistence in semen showed that the frequency of Ebola-positive samples decreased over time. This is a positive sign because it hints towards the idea that over time the body is able to combat the hiding disease.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, in the article "Science Doesn't Work the Way You Might Think" the idea of autonomous scientific facts is postulated. Through the use of two examples (The assumed existence of a new planet named 'Vulcan" and the resistance to the concept of continental drift.) the author shows facts gain meaning from the frameworks within which human beings interpret them. It is sometimes very hard for us to see what 'Ought to be there' based on assumptions that we presume to be true. The concept of Vulcan came about from an observation in December of 1859. An analysis of Mercury showed that there was a tiny wobble in the planet's orbit around the sun. According to Newtonian Physics, this could only be explained by the existence of another heavenly body asserting pressure through gravity on Mercury. Einstein, through his newly devised theories of relativity and gravity, showed that the observations made complete sense. In the case of continental drift, opposition to the theory was rooted in the strangeness of the geology and fossil evidence. Both cases show that a misconception of the true nature of reality can come from beliefs in theories that do not fully grasp the concepts that they are trying to explain. (This can lead to partially correct predictions that do not fully explain why phenomena take place.)
The article about finding evidence of plagues in ancient DNA is very interesting. It's crazy to think that bones still have DNA in them thousands of years later. The researchers found the first evidence of the microbe Yersinia pestis to be dated back to the Plague of Justinian in the 6th century. A new study said that this bacteria has been killing people since 5,000 years ago. Scientists say that these plagues might have been the causes for why some places were being repopulated by migrants. In the new study the researchers looked at the DNA extracted from the bones of Bronze Age individuals, to see if any belongs to Yersinia pestis. The researchers found that 7 of the 101 bones dug up showed traces of the microbe. The researchers are still searching for the affects of this plague on the Bronze Age, and if any other pathogens have left any genetic traces. It's interesting to know who these pathogens can travel and effect people or even populations. It makes me think that these plagues are the reasons that some of us are here right now, because these epidemics have allowed people to migrate into regions that have been decimated by the plagues.
ReplyDeleteI really like the video on the Ebola crisis, explaining how and what must be done to try and quarantine and prevent the spread of this deadly virus. it gives a real life image of what is really happening in our world and how devastating and deadly this virus really is. Its amazing what the doctors have to see and go through just to not get infected themselves. these doctors are putting there life on the line for the better of our entire planet, the lack there of willing doctors to work with this virus puts a burden of more work and deadlier circumstances for the doctors that are willing to work. i like the video because when u read about the Ebola outbreak its shocking but when you put visual aid on what is terrorizing Africa right now you really get an insight on how devastating this virus is. its crazy the precautions these doctors have to go through just to keep themselves from contracting the virus. Ebola is an extremely graphic and disturbing virus to see, these doctors are the real MVP.
ReplyDeleteI read the article Science Doesn't Work the Way We Think it Does. This article like the point made by Gould in the Sharp Hide Lynx had to with the nature of observation of a Vatican a difference in the wobble patterns of the orbit of the planet Mercury. This new development was inconsistent with the Newton's theory of gravity and no wanted to capture because of this. Then came along Einstein and revolutionize the world with his revolutionary theory of general relativity. The objection was due to the prestige and success of the Newtonian paradigm, thus resulting in a delay to find the data need for the Einstein paradigm shift, these kinds of subjective prestige issue still obstruct the supposedly objective processes of science in the modern world.
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