More Good News

Finally, a new insulin therapy for diabetics. Since insulin was invented, it's been given by injection. So not only does the patient have to poke their fingers to get a blood sample, but most often it's followed by injection, sometimes several injections a day.

Pfizer now has an inhaled form of insulin called Exubera, which was approved by the FDA on Friday. This is very good news for the 5 million + diabetics in the U.S. Safety and effectiveness were studied in more than 2500 adults with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, and peak insulin levels were achieved on average of 49 minutes, versus an average of105 minutes with injected insulins.


The bad news, Exhubera shouldn't be used by smokers, or those who quit smoking within the last 6 months, the FDA said. Nor is it recommended for people with bronchitis, asthma, or emphysema.

Pfizer will continute to conduct long-term studies of Exhubera's safety and effectivenss, particularly those with underlying lung disease, the FDA said.

What would be better, would be a permanent cure. I believe they're working on that one!

Ebola

You might be wondering why on earth a blogger in the USA would post anything about the Ebola virus in Africa. If so, read on.

Since the Ebola plague came to the news here, my tiny brain started trying to figure out what was going on. It wasn't just Ebola, there were a few other horrible and mysterious virii popping out of the jungle.

Ebola hemorrhagic Ebola kills between half and 90 percent of it's victims within days. It is highly contagious, but so far has been confined to Africa. Officials worry that this virus could be used as a bioterror weapon. And that in itself is enough to cause concern. But there are other reasons for concern with Ebola.

I've followed the news on African primates for better than 20 years. One huge problem is their habitat is being eroded away. Inch by inch, meter by meter. Areas of Africa that were never trod upon by the likes of human kind are being penetrated, and nature's nastiest creatures in the form of bacteria and virii live in those areas in great abundance.

These areas of deep forest are buffer zones. When the buffer zones are all gone, all bets are off. Those bacteria and virii will find new vectors to inhabit, and people will be infected at astonishing rates.


What other horrors are just beyond? What might be lurking in the Amazon, and how will we defend ourselves from it? I'm no expert, but I'd bet dollars to doughnuts it's a considerable amount of lethal material in that world.


The good news is there is now a vaccine for the Ebola virus which has passed it's first safety test. It's still very early in the test phase, so far it looks good. The unfortunate thing about working with virii is the rapid rate of mutation. We've heard about this in the news recently concerning pandemic bird flu and it's possible consequences.