Altruistic vaccines: take them after you get sick and your blood becomes mosquito-poison

A dengue fever vaccine being developed with funding from the Gates Foundation takes a novel approach: it's an "altruistic" vaccine that you take after you get sick. It renders your blood poisonous to the mosquitoes who spread the disease, which means that your neighbors won't catch your fever.
Professor Young says dengue is a problem which affects millions around the world and mosquito transmitted pathogens such as dengue and malaria are a significant disease burden on the world's population.

His aim is to develop a novel vaccine approach that is based on blocking mosquito transmission of these disease agents rather than inducing pathogen-specific immunity.

Money from Bill and Melinda Gates will help beat Dengue fever in Australia (via /.)

Read more    

Cory Doctorow

Upcoming appearances

* Feb 9, 2012, DeKalb, IL: Day of Doctorow, NIU
* Feb 10-12, 2012, Chicago, IL: Capricon 32
* Feb 13, 2012, Arlington, TX: UT Arlington College of Engineering Distinguished Speaker Series
* Feb 16, 2012, Victoria, BC: 13th Annual Privacy and Security Conference

Recent books:
* Context (essays)
* With a Little Help (short stories)
* For the Win (YA novel)
* Makers (adult novel)

Where not otherwise specified, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution. Boing Boing is a trademark of Happy Mutants LLC in the United States and other countries.