Class blog for sharing and commenting on current events in biology.

Friday, April 10, 2015

2 New Ebola Vaccines Pass Important Early Test, Researchers Say

Pablo Rivera 4/10/15 Biology   Current Event #1
Grady, Denise. "2 New Ebola Vaccines Pass Important Early Test, Researchers Say." The New York Times. The New York Times, 08 Apr. 2015. Web. 10 Apr. 2015.

As of September 2014, Ebola, a deadly and rare virus took all of West Africa by storm. Many people were infected, not only that but this virus spread to Europe and even the United States. Thousands of people were treated in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. Since the start of the outbreak more than 10,000 people have passed away from this terrible disease. There are still many people infected with this disease, but scientist want to end this as soon as possible. What scientist are trying to accomplish is to find a cure for this disease and hopefully end it from existence. Now, 2 Ebola Vaccines have been tested on 8 monkeys. There were ten monkeys, eight of them were given the vaccines first, while the other two were were injected with the vaccine. Then once all eight monkeys received the vaccine, None of them showed any side effects or any sign of the disease in their body. Sadly, the two other monkeys died of the virus shortly after the virus was administered. Before there can be any tests on humans or anything. They will do the experiment again with 10 more monkeys.

Although the article was presented very well, there were some topics I was confused about. Since I’m not a Ebola expert or anything, I didn't know the names of these two drugs that could be given to patience with this virus. The article also had very clever statistics but I felt, it should have explained it a little bit more. Also most of the statistic I got, I had to pull up some background research to make sure I am presenting the correct data. Something like those two ideas could have made the article better and something more people would want to read.

The article presented so much more information on what is to come about beating this virus, so that no more people have to be harmed. Not only that but article came together very nicely, included very important vocabulary and presented more information on the Ebola virus. Even though this virus is almost beat, we have to think about how painful and stressful it is to be a scientist.

2 comments:

  1. This was a great article to choose since I have not seen much news about Ebola for months now. It is very sad that the death toll was so high because of this awful disease but it is amazing that scientist are close to creating a vaccine! I have more questions about the study: Are scientists testing these products on other animals besides monkeys? Has this vaccine ever been tested on humans?

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  2. comment #2
    There were many things presented well in this current event. One aspect presented well was the processes performed on the monkeys to test the vaccines. Another aspect presented well was your relevance paragraph. I thought this was presented well because you clearly stated the problems with the article. The final aspect that was presented well were the facts in your summary like of people dead and the location of the disease.
    I learned many things from this article. One thing I learned was that only 10,000 people have died ebola since September. The second thing I learned was that two different types of ebola vaccines have been create and not only one.
    One thing that could be improved would be explaining why they need to test the vaccines on ten more monkeys and how it would help the eradication of this disease.

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