{"id":351,"date":"2007-12-04T11:31:31","date_gmt":"2007-12-04T11:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/2007\/12\/made-from-blood.html"},"modified":"2007-12-04T11:31:31","modified_gmt":"2007-12-04T11:31:31","slug":"made_from_blood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/2007\/12\/made_from_blood.html","title":{"rendered":"Made from blood"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My colleague Clare Thomas pointed me to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scidev.net\/News\/index.cfm?fuseaction=readNews&#038;itemid=4091&#038;language=1\">this fascinating report<\/a> in SciDev.net.<\/p>\n<p>A Nigerian doctor is suing the Nigerian Academy of Science after challenging his claims that he has produced an effective <span class=\"caps\">HIV<\/span> vaccine from the blood of infected patients. What struck us the most was the fact that Jerimiah Abalaka, the doctor in question, cites an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/sites\/entrez?Db=pubmed&#038;Cmd=ShowDetailView&#038;TermToSearch=15364427&#038;ordinalpos=4&#038;itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum\">article<\/a> he published in the journal <em>Vaccine<\/em> as evidence of his claims&#8217; legitimacy.<\/p>\n<p>Why did <em>Vaccine<\/em> publish this paper? At the time of its publication, Ray Spier, editor of the journal, wrote an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/sites\/entrez?Db=pubmed&#038;Cmd=ShowDetailView&#038;TermToSearch=15364426&#038;ordinalpos=1&#038;itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVAbstractPlus\">editorial<\/a> saying that Abalaka&#8217;s study was not published a peer-reviewed research paper, but as a report. He then goes to great lengths to try to justify his decision to publish the paper and concludes by stating that &#8220;desperate situations call for desperate measures&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>This statement seems absurd to me. If the paper wasn\u2019t peer reviewed, what is the true value of the data? I wish I could tell you how many charlatans send us papers every month, reporting cures for all kinds of diseases (including <span class=\"caps\">HIV<\/span>, of course), and how quickly we reject them without further ado. How supremely irresponsible of <em>Vaccine<\/em> to publish something of such potential importance without peer review! Has science been served by the decision? The only thing that has come out of it is undue support for a man who is now in a stronger position to put the lives of thousands of people at risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My colleague Clare Thomas pointed me to this fascinating report in SciDev.net.&nbsp; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/2007\/12\/made_from_blood.html#wpn-more-351\" class=\"more-link\">Read more<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/2007\/12\/made_from_blood.html\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":162,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/162"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/spoonful\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}