Anyway, Dr. Anke Burger-Kentischer of the Institut für Grenzflächenverfahrenstechnik at Stuttgart, along with her team and the cell systems department recently developed a three-dimensional infection model for the herpes virus. Because herpes flares up with cold sores on the lip and then hides in a lysogenic phase in the nerve cells, it is difficult to study. This new model makes it easier to detect if the virus is really gone or just dormant. Like similar news previously reported here, this approach replaces animal testing with a more useful and less cruel alternative.
Dr. Burger-Kentischer believes that the model can be adapted to study another member of alphaherpesvirinae, the varicella zoster virus, which causes shingles and chicken pox. Of course, you all received your vaccination for that, right? I know the vaccine has gelatin in it and is created using chicken embryos, but besides saving human lives, vaccination removes the need for animal testing and research using animal products. If you want to make a change, go to the crux of the issue and press for vegan vaccines. In the meantime, circle circle dot dot...
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I'm from the generation whose parents forced us all to go down the street and hang out with the kid who had chickenpox so we'd get it too. So no varicella zoster virus vaccine for me!
ReplyDeleteThanks for this -- I'll have to follow this up. I write blog posts (mainly about STIs) for a local chapter of a national organization that provides sexual-health services and is reviled by Republicans near and far. Yeah, that one. This should make a really good entry; it'd probably be the first time I got to inject a little animal-rights stuff into the discussion.
By the way, yo mama along with 90 percent of the rest of us have been exposed to HSV-1, most of us as children through nonsexual means.
Good point about the non-sexual herpes transmission. I'll keep an eye out for more STI info and pass it along.
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