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Labs Scramble to Destroy Deadly Flu Samples
An anonymous reader submits "According to this Yahoo! news story, a deadly strain of the Flu virus was mistakenly sent out to thousands of labs, mostly in the U.S., as samples for routine testing. The samples were sent starting last year, but the rush to destroy them began shortly after the WHO raised an alert last Friday following its discovery by the National Microbial Laboratory Canada on March 26. It was not immediately clear why the 1957 pandemic strain, which killed between 1 million and 4 million people -- was in the proficiency test kits routinely sent to labs."
"Oops."
It was not immediately clear why the 1957 pandemic strain, which killed between 1 million and 4 million people -- was in the proficiency test kits routinely sent to labs.
You'd have to be pretty freaking proficient to kill it, I guess, so it's a good test.
ResidntGeek
This scares the living shit out of me. I really appreciate all the work that scientists do to protect, understand and appreciate deadly virii in the name of humankind, but for the love of god, people, don't be foolheardy with these biological agents. I think what I dread the most is some alien discovering this world a thousand years from now, a corpse planet, a slow hour long series of flashbacks and a slow fadeout to, "they were destroyed by their own hubris!" I mean, talk about cliche. If you find yourself in possession of a deadly virus, be extra careful and don't send it out to your grandmom by accident, just a tip.
when they were asked to pick a strain themselves to test people with, and it took the WHO to tell them they screwed up and shouldn't have done it?
How many private firms have stockpiles of old virus strains we no longer have immunity to? And are they really that stupid?
Captain Trips? So soon? Go back to sleep. Your time is soon enough.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
but the rush to destroy them
If it gets in the wild and outside of a controlled lab, all I can say is "Good Luck."
It was not immediately clear why the 1957 pandemic strain, which killed between 1 million and 4 million people -- was in the proficiency test kits routinely sent to labs.
Yeah, I'll bet the guy who leaked it is sorry, it was supposed to be the 1918 strain.
So this time South Park got it right huh... Blame Canada might be accurate.
This was less expensive then sending 3,747 ebola laden monkeys around the the world.
A week after I get over a nasty nasty flu, this article pops up. Thanks slashdot for fueling the little hypochondriac inside us all.
1) Through there are obvious ethical questions, what legal responsibilities are their for scientits domestically and under international law to protect the public from releasing (intentionally or unintentionally) these types of strains.
... because they didn't have any. What about the U.S., Europe? The problem is international contamination of viruses now because almost any country is witin a 10 to 15 hour flight.
My hope is that the scientist(s) responsible for this accident, are at least, fined for this incident. I hope if there is gross incompetence, that they not work as a scientist in a medical facility ever again.
2) If this is such a dangerous flu virus, and it hasn't been innoculated against since 1957 or 1960, why were the innoculations stopped?
I think its similar to small pox, where unfortunately, it was supposed to be "destroyed". But like nuclear weapons, its a "Well, if you're keeping it, so are we." mentality.
3) After seeing problems with SARS evolve internationnaly (particually where I live, in Canada) what measures are being taken to seclude and isolate potential travellers, who move about with flu-like symptoms?
I raised this with gov't officials at Health Canada about two years ago during the SARS. They said the airplanes were throughly 'cleaned' after each flight. How? When? With what? They really couldn't give me details
It was not immediately clear why the 1957 pandemic strain, which killed between 1 million and 4 million people -- was in the proficiency test kits routinely sent to labs.
Because now, through the magic of natural selection, we will have only the BEST biotech engineers and doctors. In college it's often called the "weeding out" process.
<snicker>Intro to Biology is a real killer this year.</snicker>
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
And the 2005 Ig Nobel Prize in the field of medicine goes to...
Help us build a better map!
My wife works in a hospital lab that got one of these. They're just regular QA kits run by regular lab techs. If they were really so dangerous, they wouldn't be sending these things out to these kinds of labs (just your friendly local hospital lab), especially since the labs are literally surrounded by patients (in the same building).
I guess it wasn't those 12 monkeys after all!
A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
Think of this as nature's way of saying that there's too many humans. A good pandemic is just what we need.
If it does get out, what better way to ensure that the majority of survivors will have antibodies for this particular strain? We're not going to fall for it twice!
In that case they would get prison and half a million fine.
Luckily, they only sent deadly virus to thousands of labs. Virus that once killed 1 to 4 million people, but at least nobody got distracted while flying a plane.
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
i couldnt find any bid on ebay yet.
If you want to test the proficiency of pathologists, you are going to have to send them live samples of real diseases. The trick is to not select samples of diseases that have an excessively high risk of starting a deadly epidemic if accidentally released.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Captain Trips?
I really appreciate all the work that scientists do to protect, understand and appreciate deadly virii in the name of humankind, but for the love of god, people, don't be foolheardy with these biological agents.
Your average, garden variety "scientist" is an utter and complete moron.
I know - I've been working on a big LabVIEW database thing, and, trust me, these people couldn't find their way out of a paper bag if you gave them a flashlight. [And you wouldn't believe the potential safety catastrophes I encountered - time and time again I was warning them about things that could catch on fire and things that could explode; quite frankly, I'm surprised they haven't blown themselves to smithereens by now.]
The fellows who frequent Slashdot typically come from a compsci/physics/math kind of a background, and would be rather shocked to see what passes for a "scientist" these days - you don't need an IQ much higher than a doorknob to get a job working in one of these biology labs. And if the inherent absence of rigor in the "biology" profession weren't bad enough in its own right, the government magnifies the problem almost infinitely by pouring billions of dollars of grant money into the "biology" cesspool every year.
Frankly, I'm at the point where I'd take the word of a good auto mechanic before I'd trust anything a "scientist" had to say.
At first I thought it was an April fool's joke when I saw "National Microbial Laboratory Canada" which does not exist - "Health Canada National Microbiology Laboratory" does exist though. But, unfortunately, it's just another example of poor reporting and maybe some CYA politics.
The article implies that because this is an old virus, people born after 1968, the last time it was in a vaccine, have no immunity to it. What she was probably told was that it was unlikely that anyone born after 1968 would be immune to it which is quite different. Influenza vaccines are (somewhat) effective because although the viruses mutate rapidly, they are related and exposure to a related virus can confer resistance. If the reporter had done a Google like I did http://www.hhs.gov/nvpo/pandemics/flu3.htm, she would have found that the same family of flu resurfaced in 1978 and a member of this family was included in vaccines after that.
Finally, according to the article, this kit has been floating around for a year with that sample and most countries only require level 2 facilities to handle it. Scientists value their lives as much as the next guy - so it's apparent that noone thought much of the risk. Makes me wonder whether the viruses were even infective. The recommendation for the virus in the kit to be destroyed only came about when the Canadian lab found it in another sample - meaning someone got sloppy and everyone went into CYA mode. Anyway, it probably is a good idea not to have that virus in the kit, if only to avoid articles like this - which was probably the thinking at WHO, rather than this being a real risk.
I work in a hospital lab as a med tech. We were sent this sample for testing. We get blind samples every 6 months from CAP to check our methodology. We only test for type A and B but don't serotype the sample of virus. I have treated these samples as capable of transmitting disease. I must admit some of my peers are not quite as careful. I had seen the info on the news but didn't think we had received this test kit. I came in to work and asked if we had received a notice from CAP and was told yes. Scared the hell out me because of knowing my peers don't take the same precautions I do. I really don't think the general public have a clue what happens in a modern (well kinda modern) hospital laboratory. I have handled petri dishes with enough sterp bacteria to infect a small city or blood samples capable of infecting half the country with HIV. We handle samples that will kill you before you know has happened. In collage we proformed a little experiment, We took a common bowl flora E.Colli and in 10 days made it resistant to ever antibiotic but Cipro (just in case we needed to be treated for it). Docs are doing this experiment every day due to peps demanding the magic pill to cure all that is wrong with them. Just think about this ... It would only take one really pissed off person, a few petri dishes, very little knowledge, a little time, and the right opportunity to make the world a very nasty place to live.
Okay I know people probably aren't still following this thread but I found an interesting followup to this discussion on CBC.
Apparently two countries: Lebanon and Mexico were likely sent this sample kit but their labs did not recieve it. Intercepted or lost in transit? Fishy...