Ten billion dollars pledged for vaccines

Yesterday, Bill Gates officially announced he will donate 10 billlion dollars for a 10 year effort to boost vaccination against infectious diseases in developing countries. The investment is estimated to save almost 9.000.000 certain deaths, along with a significant health improvement. I won’t get into more details, which if you want you can find on nature [...]

Bacteria wouldn’t go for a swine flu shot

Just like many categories of people, I’ve recently been (insistently) offered a free flu shot. I said no. Without going into the reasons that determined me to do this, let’s look at what would determine the average bacteria to do the same thing, at least according to Tel Aviv University bacteria expert Prof. Eshel Ben-Jacob. Bacteria [...]

The swine flu paaanic [pics, slightly NSFW]

Swine flu has been officially declared a pandemic, and although it’s not one of the deadliest by any standards, it can be deadly (just like the average flu can). However, despite the fact that the deaths/infected ratio is around 0.1%, people are going absolutely crazy about it, blowing everything out of proportions. Here are some [...]

AIDS vaccine shows success for the first time

AIDS is one of the most dangerous diseases nowadays, being a pandemic for many years now, and there’s been quite little development for a cure or a vaccine. However in the past few years researchers have been getting closer and closer to pinning down a solution. Yesterday, a team formed of Thai and US scientists [...]

Current flu vaccines inactive against the Swine flu

For some reason, many people believed the current flu vaccine will be effective against this swine flu that’s already expanding and very difficult to control. Still, even some researchers claimed that it will be at least somewhat effective. Guess what - it won’t. Or at least the vast majority of scientists claim it won’t. The U.S. [...]