Word: vaccinia
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...France, however, some AIDS researchers appear more hopeful. Dr. Marc Girard of the Pasteur Institute in Paris announced last week that a vaccine developed there should be ready for human trials sometime next year. The vaccine was developed by adding protein fragments from the AIDS virus to vaccinia, the virus that causes cowpox and is harmless to humans...
...medical researchers hope soon to have a powerful ally in their campaign against viruses: vaccines made from genetically engineered viruses. At the NIH, Dr. Bernard Moss is using recombinant DNA techniques to convert vaccinia, a large virus that causes cowpox, into a one-shot, multidisease vaccine. He plans to insert only the antigen-coding genes of eight to ten kinds of dangerous viruses into the DNA of live but weakened vaccinia viruses. The re- engineered vaccinia would then sport the antigens of the harmful viruses, but not their ability to cause disease. Once inoculated, it would stimulate the immune system...
...starting point for the dramatic research is the oldest vaccine on earth: a smallpox prophylactic made from a live cowpox virus called vaccinia. It was developed two centuries ago by Edward Jenner, a British physician who had observed that milkmaids exposed to cowpox were immune to smallpox. Because vaccinia is an unusually large virus and because it has been familiar to scientists for so long, it was an ideal subject for genetic tinkering...
...England Journal of Medicine, says that 68% of the patients had serious complications after being vaccinated for the first time (only 7% after repeat vaccinations). No fewer than 20% of the patients had never been directly vaccinated at all: they were mostly children with eczema who picked up the vaccinia (cowpox) infection accidentally from contact with somebody else's sore arm. In the entire group surveyed there were nine deaths, while three survivors appear to have suffered brain damage and a fourth is paralyzed in both arms and legs. In all likelihood, say the N.C.D.C. investigators, complications are many...
...Kempe's proposal for a near-total halt to mass vaccination, potent agents for reducing its ravages are already available. One is a safer vaccine that Kempe has devised. Before that, or something like it, comes into general use, doctors can still use a VIG gamma globulin extract, vaccinia immune globulin (VIG), which contains antibodies from recently vaccinated blood donors, to protect the very young and those in poor health who have to be vaccinated. The value of VIG is well established; it has been stocked for years in 15 Red Cross regional blood banks for distribution to doctors...