{"id":19218,"date":"2013-09-18T08:57:27","date_gmt":"2013-09-18T12:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theredphoenixapl.org\/?p=19218"},"modified":"2013-09-18T08:57:27","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T12:57:27","slug":"cuba-creates-four-anti-cancer-vaccines-media-ignores-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2013\/09\/cuba-creates-four-anti-cancer-vaccines-media-ignores-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Cuba crea cuatro vacunas contra el c\u00e1ncer, los medios lo ignoran."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"vaccines\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By<\/span>\u00a0Jo MacLean<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

That Cuba has already developed\u00a0<\/span>four vaccines or inoculations against different types of cancer<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0is without doubt important news for humanity. The World Health Organisation says each year<\/span>\u00a0about 8 million people<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0die from this illness.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the international mainstream media have almost totally ignored this news.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last year,<\/span>\u00a0Cuba patented the first therapeutic vaccine against advanced lung cancer<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0in the world, called CIMAVAX-EGF. In January, the second one,<\/span>\u00a0called Racotumomab<\/span><\/a><\/span>, was announced.<\/span><\/p>\n

Clinical testing in 86 countries shows that these vaccines, although they don\u2019t cure the illness, do managed to reduce tumours and allow for a stable stage of the illness, thereby increasing hope and quality of life.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Molecular Immunology Centre of Havana, a Cuban state organisation, is the creator of all these vaccines.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1985 it developed the<\/span>\u00a0vaccine for meningitis B<\/span><\/a><\/span>, the only one in the world, and later others that<\/span>\u00a0fight hepatitis B and dengue<\/span><\/a><\/span>. For years, the centre has been conducting research to<\/span>\u00a0develop vaccines against AIDS-HIV<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The other Cuban state-run centre, Laboratories LABIOFAM, has developed<\/span>\u00a0homeopathic medicine for cancer such as VIDATOX<\/span><\/a><\/span>, created from the blue scorpion\u2019s venom. Cuba exports these medicines to 26 countries, and takes part in joint companies with China, Canada, and Spain.<\/span><\/p>\n

All of this goes against the well-enforced stereotype, reinforced by the media silence regarding advances achieved by Cuba and other global south (so-called Third World) countries, that vanguard medical research takes place only in so-called developed countries.<\/span><\/p>\n

Undoubtedly, the Cuban state obtains an economic benefit from the international sale of these pharmaceutical products. However, its philosophy of investigation and commercialisation is diametrically opposed to the business practices of the large pharmaceutical industry.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nobel Prize for Medicine winner Richard J Roberts recently denounced the pharmaceutical industry for orienting its research not to curing illnesses, but to developing medicine for chronic ailments, which is much more economically profitable.<\/span><\/p>\n

Roberts suggested the illnesses that are particular to poorer countries, because of their low profitability, simply are not researched. That is why 90% of the budget for research is aimed at illnesses suffered by 10% of the world\u2019s population.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cuba\u2019s public medicine industry, even though it is one of the main sources of foreign currency for the country, is guided by radically different principles.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the first place, its research is aimed at, in a large part, developing vaccines that prevent illnesses and as a consequence, reduce the population\u2019s spending on medicine.<\/span><\/p>\n

In an article in the prestigious magazine\u00a0Science<\/em>, researchers from Stanford University (California), Paul Drain and Michele Barry, said<\/span>\u00a0Cuba has better health indicators than the United States<\/span><\/a><\/span>, despite spending up to 20 times less on the sector.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reason for this is the absence, in the Cuban model, of commercial pressures and encouragement by pharmaceutical companies, and a successful strategy of educating the population about preventative healthcare.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, traditional and natural therapies, such as herbal medicine, acupuncture, hypnosis and many others \u2014 practices that are not very profitable for the makers of medicine \u2014 have been<\/span>\u00a0integrated into the free public health system<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0of the island for years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Also, in Cuba, medicine is distributed via the national public hospital network as something that is either free or highly subsidised, thanks to the income from exporting it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Cuban medicine industry also barely assigns any of its budget to publicity. In the case of the multinationals, publicity spending is higher than what they<\/span>\u00a0invest in actual research<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, Cuba promotes the production of generic medicine. These are made available in other poor countries and to the World Health Organisation at\u00a0<\/span>much lower prices<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0than those offered by the global medicine industry.<\/span><\/p>\n

But these measures, removed from market rules, generate a lot of pressure from the pharmaceutical industry.<\/span><\/p>\n

Recently, the Ecuadorian government announced it would buy a large number of medicines from Cuba in exchange for scholarships for Ecuadorian students to study in Cuba and for the support provided by Cuban specialists in\u00a0.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Protests against the move by the Ecuadorian Association of Pharmaceutical Laboratories were immediately converted into<\/span>\u00a0a media campaign<\/span><\/a><\/span>, spreading the message of the supposed bad quality of Cuban medicine.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the other hand, many analysts see the international pharmaceutical industry as being behind the coup in Honduras in 2009. The elected government of Manuel Zelaya, in the framework of agreements made within the Cuba- and Venezuela-founded Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our Americas to which Honduras then belonged,<\/span>\u00a0aimed to substitute Cuban generic medicine<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0for imports from multinationals.<\/span><\/p>\n

The US blockade against Cuba imposes big obstacles to the international commercialisation of Cuban pharmaceutical products, but it is also directly detrimental to US citizens. For example, each year the 80,000 diabetics in the US who suffer the amputation of their toes don\u2019t have access to<\/span>\u00a0the Cuban vaccine Heperprot P<\/span><\/a><\/span>, which would prevent such amputations.<\/span><\/p>\n

The<\/span>\u00a0Chemistry Nobel Prize winner Peter Agre recently said<\/span><\/a><\/span>: \u201cCuba is a magnificent example of how scientific knowledge and research can be integrated.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Irina Bokova, general director of UNESCO, said she was<\/span>\u00a0impressed by Cuba\u2019s scientific achievements<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0and her organisation is willing to promote them to the rest of the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

The inevitable question is, will she count on the essential collaboration of the international mainstream media to spread this information?<\/span><\/p>\n

[Original can be found at<\/span>\u00a0www.cubainformacion.tv<\/span><\/a><\/span>. Translated for\u00a0Green Left Weekly<\/em>\u00a0by Tamara Pearson.]<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Jo MacLean That Cuba has already developed\u00a0four vaccines or inoculations against different types of cancer\u00a0is without doubt important news for humanity. The World Health Organisation..<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[172,21,43,187],"tags":[320,229,340,197,289,347],"class_list":["post-19218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-healthcare","category-international","category-media-culture","category-science-tech","tag-cuba","tag-economic-exploitation","tag-honduras","tag-imperialism","tag-venezuela","tag-workers-struggle"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redphoenix.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/vaccines.jpg?fit=254%2C199&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}