Malaria breakthrough as scientists find ‘highly effective’ way to kill parasite

Re:Malaria breakthrough as scientists find ‘highly effective... by RcouF1uZ4gsC on Wednesday September 11, 2019 @09:30PM (#20946774)

>Contrast that to a vaccine that turns out to be not safe: administering the vaccine would then just be stopped.

The smallpox vaccine which was responsible for the eradication of smallpox was a live virus and could spread from person to person. And through the course of time, it did mutate/become contaminated. It was originally cowpox, but at an unknown time sometime in the 1800's actually became vaccinia virus.

https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/history/history.html https://virus.stanford.edu/pox/2000/vaccinia_virus.html

So, the great achievements of the past, such as smallpox eradication were not as risk-free as we perceive them with our 20-20 hindsight.

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Re:Malaria breakthrough as scientists find ‘highly effective... by justinclift on Wednesday September 11, 2019 @11:44PM (#20947731)

That's not what those links say:

> It is not known whether vaccinia virus is the product of genetic recombination, or if it is a species derived from cowpox virus or variola virus by prolonged serial passage, or if it is the living representative of a now extinct virus.

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