Military thinks we’re one step closer to Zika vaccine

On the heels of a National Institute of Health announcement Wednesday that the facility is launching clinical trials on humans of a Zika vaccine, the Defense Department said Thursday its vaccine has been tested in monkeys and has been proved effective, according to Military Times.

Researchers at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md., working with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at the Harvard Medical School, published an article online in the journal Nature saying that with two animal studies having been completed, they are ready to proceed with their own human trials.

The researchers found that the military-developed vaccine induced antibody production in two weeks and complete protection in monkeys after a second dose four weeks later.

“Results from both the mouse and non-human primate testing are encouraging and support a decision to move forward with ... our partners to advance our vaccine candidate to human trials,” said Col. Stephen Thomas, an Army infectious disease specialist.

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BILLINGS, Mont. — A group of motorcycle-riding military veterans who are carrying the ashes of a Civil War veteran to their final resting place have passed through Billings.

The Billings Gazette reports that Montana state chapter members of the Patriot Guard Riders, a group that attends the funerals of U.S. military veterans, firefighters and police, transferred the ashes of Jewett Williams on Wednesday before completing the next leg to the Wyoming border.

Williams served in the 20th Maine Regiment in the Civil War. When he died in 1922 at an Oregon insane asylum, he was cremated and his ashes were stored and forgotten along with the remains of thousands of other patients. On Monday, the Patriot Guard Riders took off to Maine, where Williams’ ashes will be laid to rest with military honors.

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Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that the U.S. has now taken in about 80 percent of the 10,000 Syrian refugees it has vowed to accept in the current fiscal year, according to the Washington Examiner.

“We have now taken just about 8,000 refugees from Syria — we’ve taken refugees,” he said. “Our goal for this year is 10,000. That is on top of the 85,000 people we will take and repatriate on a permanent basis with 100,000 that we’re targeting for next year.”

The Obama administration has been trying to move the process along related to screening and taking in the 10,000 refugees it promised before the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30. But Kerry said the U.S. has not cut corners when it comes to vetting the refugee candidates, amid Republican complaints that some might be Islamic State terrorists in disguise.

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Climate change, combined with economic instability, is creating a prime recruiting ground for Islamic radicals, said a national security adviser to former Republican President George W. Bush on Thursday.

“Climate change and a lot of other economic dislocations have put a lot of people out of work,” said Stephen Hadley, citing the refugee crisis in Europe as a prime example. Hadley served as Bush's national security adviser from 2001 to 2009.

“They are on the move and they have no place to go, and it means they are recruiting grounds for terrorists and extremists and potential refugee flows that will tax Europe even more,” he said while speaking at a forum hosted by Politico on Thursday.

President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry have been prime targets by Republicans who have derided them for calling climate a threat to national security, and an issue equal to the threat faced by the Islamic State.

This story was originally published August 5, 2016 at 12:03 PM with the headline "Military thinks we’re one step closer to Zika vaccine."