Trek-style Anti-Radiation Drug being developed...

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MKSheppard
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Trek-style Anti-Radiation Drug being developed...

Post by MKSheppard »

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... May18.html

Prepare yourselfs for a flood of idiot trektards...

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Radiation Sickness Drug Developed
Military Health Officials Hope Medicine Could Protect First Responders

By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 19, 2003; Page A02

U.S. military officials are expressing enthusiasm about an experimental drug that they say could protect the health of troops, police officers and emergency medical personnel who respond to terrorist attacks involving nuclear weapons or radiation-spewing "dirty bombs."

The drug being developed by Hollis-Eden Pharmaceuticals Inc. of San Diego appears to offer significant protection from radiation sickness, which would kill many more people in nuclear attacks than the initial blast, military officials and experts said.

"We want it on the fast track," said Navy Adm. James A. Zimble, a top military health official who is president of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda. "We've been very encouraged by the very positive results" of tests on animals, he added.

Experts cautioned that more research needs to be done to prove the drug's effectiveness and safety when administered to humans. The vast majority of new drugs that appear promising in animal studies never gain approval for humans. But radiation specialists said tests on this drug with mice, dogs and monkeys suggest that it will work in people and will not prove toxic.

Since the 1950s, military researchers have scrutinized thousands of compounds in a search for something that could protect troops in a nuclear war zone, but have failed. This drug is the first to hold such promise, said Mark H. Whitnall, a top researcher at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Bethesda, which is working closely with Hollis-Eden on the drug.

"My personal opinion is any agency dealing with emergency response to terrorist events should be interested" in the new drug, Whitnall said.

U.S. military officials are encouraged by results from animal studies that appear to demonstrate that the drug, called HE-2100, offers protection when administered before radiation exposure as well as a few hours after exposure, or even later. This suggests it could be given to military personnel or firefighters when it is known that they will be entering a radiated zone or as they are leaving one. Currently, there is no safe medicine to give people after they are exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, experts in the field said.

Radiation severely compromises the body's immunity to disease, so most fatalities caused by a nuclear explosion or dirty bomb blast would come from infections, including influenza and pneumonia, beginning a week to six weeks after detonation, medical experts said. A dirty bomb is a conventional explosive attached to radioactive material, which is spread when the device goes off.

HE-2100 buttresses the immune system, in particular the infection-fighting powers of bone marrow, which is most vulnerable to radiation. The drug protects the bone marrow's ability to continue creating infection-fighting cells called neutrophils even after radiation exposure. The loss of too many of these cells brings on a condition called neutropenia, which leads to infections and possibly death.

HE-2100 stimulates neutrophil production by causing cells that become neutrophils to mature and to be released into the bloodstream.

In a Hollis-Eden study completed earlier this year, monkeys that received a near-lethal radiation dose and did not receive the drug suffered severe neutropenia 50 percent of the time over the next 21 days. By contrast, monkeys given HE-2100 about three hours after being dosed with radiation, and then for the following seven days, suffered the same effects only 9 percent of the time. None of the monkeys suffered ill effects from HE-2100, the firm said.

By staving off radiation-related infection and illness in the weeks after a nuclear event, HE-2100 can, it appears, "bring people over that hump in time, where, without it, they would die," said David Grdina, a professor of radiation and cellular oncology at the University of Chicago.

"There are definitely applications for homeland security in this drug," Grdina said. Even so, Hollis-Eden is pursuing the drug's development through the U.S. military, as it has for several years, rather than switching to the Department of Homeland Security.

Some civilian officials say developing medical protections against radiation is less of a priority than working on cures for bioterror agents, which they view as the gravest current terrorist threat.

In any case, Whitnall added that the fact that HE-2100 has shown such encouraging results in tests involving three different species suggests it will be successful in humans.

"It protects against radiation damage; there's no doubt about that," said William McBride, a radiation biologist at the University of California in Los Angeles. "The question is: How much can you give a person" before it proves toxic? "It seems non-toxic so far. It's encouraging they got it into primates."

The only other drug that has been shown to protect animals from radiation, ethyol, must be given before radiation exposure, and can be highly toxic. Hollis-Eden and military officials said HE-2100 is the only compound on the horizon that has its potential.

The firm estimates that an eight-day course of the drug would cost as much as $100. Military officials said the idea is to stockpile enough doses across the country to treat both first responders and as many people in the general population as could be radiated in an attack.

The Food and Drug Administration has decided the firm can seek approval of the drug under a new set of streamlined procedures for substances believed to protect people in nuclear-biological-chemical attacks. Because it would be unethical to irradiate human beings to determine whether the drug works, the FDA says the company can rely on the animal studies to show its efficacy, and give the HE-2100 to people to test for adverse reactions.

The drug is being developed in injection form, but Hollis-Eden is looking into developing it in pill form.

Other drugs also protect humans in radioactive crises, but only from a limited range of radioactive isotopes. Potassium iodide pills, if given within hours of a radioactive event, can protect the thyroid gland, which is extremely sensitive to radiation damage. The World Health Organization recommends that the drug be stockpiled in homes near nuclear power plants.

A compound called Prussian blue also can be used to treat people who receive high doses of the radioactive element cesium, which terrorism experts say could be disseminated in a dirty bomb. Only one small European firm makes the drug, and the FDA has asked U.S. companies to apply to manufacture it.

But for now, military officials see the greatest possible benefit in HE-2100. "We're a long way from having a product," Zimble said, "but we think we can protect troops with it."
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Post by MKSheppard »

What? no damn comments?
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Post by Shinova »

MKSheppard wrote:What? no damn comments?
It's probably cause we don't know whether to be elated or to bang our heads against the wall or something. :?
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Post by kojikun »

hey, this isnt the Voyager drug which makes radiation ineffective, this just helps boost the immune systems ability to repair damage
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Post by Sea Skimmer »

We already several anti radiation drugs, though they only protect your thyroids as I recall. They work by intercepting the radioactivity before it can cause damage, they don't do anything to cure existing damage as Trek crap often seems to do.
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Post by Montcalm »

"This drug will protect you from radiation,but the side effect you`ll lose your hair and order tea earl grey" :mrgreen:
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Post by Einhander Sn0m4n »

Eh? WTF!!

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Post by Darth Wong »

It's not going to block ionizing radiation, folks. It has nothing to do with Star Trek.
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Post by SPOOFE »

It's not going to block ionizing radiation, folks.
Maybe if they reverse the polarity of the drug...?
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Post by Queeb Salaron »

Montcalm wrote:"This drug will protect you from radiation,but the side effect you`ll lose your hair and order tea earl grey" :mrgreen:
Dammit, THAT'S why I like Earl Grey!
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Post by beyond hope »

Woohoo! They've developed Rad-away! Now I can go wander the wastes with a sense of security.
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Post by NapoleonGH »

this is a step though towards making radiation less of a deadly thing, if we can prevent the immune system problems alot of low-medium level short term radiation poisoning problems can be solved, leaving only long term radiation problems (cancer and the like) and short term heavy duty brain melting helicopter pilots flying over chernoble and being dead before they land radiation poisoning.
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Post by Starscream »

I'd say that this has nothing to do with Star Trek. But I think they need to concentrate more on increasing the amount of suits that can protect people from ingesting radioactive material like the powder given off when a uranium depleted bullet hit a tank, bunker, etc. Once the powders in your system there's no way you can stop it from causing free radicals to form.
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Post by Sea Skimmer »

Starscream wrote:I'd say that this has nothing to do with Star Trek. But I think they need to concentrate more on increasing the amount of suits that can protect people from ingesting radioactive material like the powder given off when a uranium depleted bullet hit a tank, bunker, etc. Once the powders in your system there's no way you can stop it from causing free radicals to form.
You don't need a full suit to ward off DU dust, a mask works just fine. Though DU has been concluded as being a minimal health risk by the WHO anyway, its less radioactive then normal background levels from the ground and the only real danger is possible heavy metal poisoning over a very small area.


Its the stuff removed from uranium to make it depleted, U-235, along with substances such as clesium-147 and 137 you need to worry about
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Post by Darth Wong »

Sea Skimmer wrote:You don't need a full suit to ward off DU dust, a mask works just fine. Though DU has been concluded as being a minimal health risk by the WHO anyway, its less radioactive then normal background levels from the ground and the only real danger is possible heavy metal poisoning over a very small area.
The WHMIS datasheet on depleted uranium and DU oxide tells a much different tale. The material is highly toxic if ingested.
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Post by Sea Skimmer »

Darth Wong wrote: The WHMIS datasheet on depleted uranium and DU oxide tells a much different tale. The material is highly toxic if ingested.
Thus my note on the risk from heavy metal poisoning. You still don't need a full suit.
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Post by MKSheppard »

Darth Wong wrote: The WHMIS datasheet on depleted uranium and DU oxide tells a much different tale. The material is highly toxic if ingested.
Then don't swallow it. Sheesh. :roll:
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Post by Starscream »

MKSheppard wrote:
Darth Wong wrote: The WHMIS datasheet on depleted uranium and DU oxide tells a much different tale. The material is highly toxic if ingested.
Then don't swallow it. Sheesh. :roll:


By ingested I mean any form of allowing it into your system, like breathing it in. Lol I'm not an English major.
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Post by NapoleonGH »

also, some dust gets in the dirt, messes with your crops, some dust lands on your crops, you eat it.
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Post by Sea Skimmer »

NapoleonGH wrote:also, some dust gets in the dirt, messes with your crops, some dust lands on your crops, you eat it.
Unless you wash what you eat.
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