03-27-2009, 07:39 PM
Here's a quickie for you all; I saw this article and couldn't help but share it. I'm just glad this is not my line of work:
Quote:Experimental Ebola Vaccine Used on Human
Friday, March 27, 2009
Associated Press
BERLIN â It's a nightmare scenario worthy of a sci-fi movie script: A scientist accidentally pricks her finger with a needle used to inject the deadly Ebola virus into lab mice.
But in this case, it really happened â to an unidentified 45-year-old woman in Germany.
Within hours of the accident on March 12, several of the scientist's colleagues held a trans-Atlantic telephone conference to map out a way to save her life.
Within 24 hours, an experimental vaccine â never before tried on humans â was on its way to Germany from a lab in Canada.
Within 40 hours, the at-risk scientist was injected with the vaccine.
So far, so good. If the woman is still healthy on April 2, she can consider herself safe.
It's not a 100 percent certainty the researcher was actually infected with Ebola.
If she doesn't become infected, scientists may not know if it was the vaccine, or luck.
"The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self." -Albert Einsetin