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Smallpox From The Past
An anonymous reader submits "Earlier this year, librarian Susanne Caro was looking through an 1888 book on United States Civil War medicine and discovered a small envelope labeled 'scabs from vaccination of W.B. Yarrington's children' and signed by Dr. W.D. Kelly, the author of the book. After a bit of research, she realized they might be smallpox scabs used in early live vaccination methods and contacted various officials including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC was excited by the find, because it gives them an untreated specimen from over a century ago, and a chance to look at the disease's evolution. Although the FBI had concerns that the smallpox may have been planted in the book, most of the researchers believe the scabs are too old to be dangerous, and they fear they may not even be able to yield live smallpox."
is this a bad thing?? I'd feel better knowing that no remnants of the virus were able to survive that long.
Virus represent the border between living and dead matter. I thought that it meant that when the virus came across a host cell it could inject its DNA and multiply and that is why it is living , and when it didn't it just lay dormant i.e. it was dead matter. Wasn't the whole premise of Jurrasic Park based on this notion ?
But in the article it says ....
If the virus is nothing but the DNA and a protein coating around it, why are the people wanting it to be live ?
Am I missing something ? What am I missing ?
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
At many times, the Russians have felt that they could win a nuclear war against the US.
And as far as what good is it? The population after a nuclear attack is especially vulnerable (reduced resistance due to stress or radiation sickness, medical facilities overflowed, lots of movement to spread the disease).
The Russians could simply have a vast supply of vaccine ready to distribute.
As far as how you dispense the agent, you use a different RV.
There is no doubt that the USSR had a vast bioweapons program. Many outsiders have now seen the remnants of it, so we are not just relying on Alibek's views. The British had a defector who kept quiet for years about it who had the same story.
And remember, the USSR was not the most rational or efficient organization. The fact that it *could* make these warheads may have been enough to cause them to do it.
The only good weather is bad weather.
First, I think if they can get any DNA out of it, that would be nice. If they mostly (at least supposedly) want to study the evolution of the virus, I'm sure they can garner some information just by comparing the DNA sequence of whatever they pull out, vs. the "current" stock. Of course it's always best to get the whole genome, but there will almost always be highly conserved (having a very low mutation rate) DNA regions. In organisms with large genomes, you can often compare those against each other to study the amount of divergence.
...
... I'm slightly confused. If the latest vaccine used was cowpox-based, are they trying to study the similarities between now-cowpox and then-smallpox? I can see them wanting to understand how a virus has evolved, but I don't see what exactly comparing it to cowpox would do. Perhaps they want to study how the two have diverged. Any thoughts?
Second
"This could lead to a greater evolutionary understanding of the smallpox vaccine we're using in the U.S.,"
Hm
The floggings will stop when morale improves.
AIAAD (Actually, I am a doctor). In fact, my specialty is Infectious Diseases.
By 1888 vaccination against smallpox using cowpox or vaccinia virus was a common practice, as opposed to "variolization" (inoculation with actual smallpox virus, aka variola virus), since the former was so much safer. This is touched on only briefly in the Washington Post article. So even if there is viable virus in the scab, it may not be smallpox. For reference see the first part of this chapter.
>K
With the Democratic primaries yet to get underway, there's no way to be sure which of the Democrat/Republican candidates will more likely "clean house". It's a pretty safe bet that it won't be Bush, who offers the worst governance here since George III (ironic). I already detailed some obvious, compelling government incompetence in my original post. I leave it to the candidates to pitch their vision of better governance, and the voters to decide which candidate to take up on their offer. As we write these words, you and I are engaging a fraction of the voters, however small. That kind of citizen activity is our privilege and duty. Shirking it is a luxury we cannot afford, exceeding it is not necessary when widely applied. This is the peer-to-peer model of unity that revolutionized government when installed in the late 1700s, and has kept us going for centuries since
If we were to upgrade the US government, I'd keep the entire basic framework, of course. The problems we have now are mainly the result of the last few generations gaming the system, perverting small holes in the execution of the system into giant power abuses. If you're really listening, I'll hit a few highlights of my patches.
Proportional voting. Or "instant runoffs" - instead of choosing only one candidate, and valuing the rest equally as "loser", we sort the candidates by preference. The one whose combined total is highest is the one best representing the voters. Lazy voters can just choose their top 2, 3 or 5. When proportional voting is underway, we can open the ballots to anyone meeting a minimum petition requirement for seriousness, like 5% of the registered voters in the voting district.
Immediately drop the electoral college in favor of total popular vote percentage across the country, as it's an implementation artifact from centuries ago, when travel and communication was much cruder. Likewise the single Election Day, giving a floating day off work to anyone claiming it in an election November. Hell, if that isn't enough, let's study the cost/benefits of requiring best 2 out of 3 elections, across a month or two, with all results kept secret until the third was complete. Just to get a meaningful sample into the statistical model of "the will of the people", that we call an election.
While we're at it, set the income of every elected official at the *median* (50/50% of population) salary in their constituency. With a pension at the upper 10% of that constituency. And no other income allowed, with annual audits. Encourage politicians to do it for more than the money, while guaranteeing them financial rewards, and an incentive to retire. With an additional incentive to long-range plan for the incomes of that constituency, to which their income will be directly tied.
Still talking about auditing politicians, make the Office of Special Prosecutor *permanent*, hired/fired by the Supreme Court, with jurisdiction over the other two bodies. Let's give Congress a permanent Judicial Reform committee with Supreme Court oversight. Enough of this crap where President appoints whichever selfserving Attorney General he wants to run the Justice Department, usurping the Judicial Branch. That con should have died with Nixon's Saturday Night massacre, when a succession of AGs resigned rather than supress Watergate, until a compliant Robert Bork sucked up the sleaze (and was almost installed on the Supreme Court for life by Reagan 10 years later).
Getting really "libertarian", let's require every candidate to submit their "promises" in writing, before the election. Every candidate seeking a possibly budget-proposing office would have to submit their budget *before* the election. Let's give Tax Day and Election Day (or Month) the same deadline. With tax forms & guides published in the same volumes as the candidates' proposals and sample ballots, submitted at the same time by citizens. Class action suits against lying politicians would be much easi
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make install -not war