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."

Comments

this is the way the world ends

[Leontes]

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.

This can't be good.

[Koiu Lpoi]

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."

Re:so a private firm made lots of it to send out

[artifex2004]

In response to your misunderstanding, the sample was distributed in a kit intended for testing sample-identification equipment. Not for testing on people, or even for making vaccines.

I did read it... did you miss the following quote?

The risk is relatively low that a lab worker will get sick, but a large number of labs got it and if someone does get infected, the risk of severe illness is high and this virus has shown to be fully transmissible," WHO's influenza chief, Klaus Stohr, told The Associated Press. (emphasis mine)

He's not talking about the strain in general. He's talking about what was sent out in all those kits to all those labs. And about real people now, not back in the 50s. That indicates people could actually catch this from the test kits if mishandled, etc., does it not? It wasn't a dead virus sample. Now, remember that a lot of these kits were sent overseas. Some people overseas may have an interest in not destroying their kits, but attempting to culture from the live sample they have.

It would really help to RTFA this time, because, while this is a serious screwup, it's not what a lot of people are thinking after reading the poorly worded summary.

Please do. I don't know what you think I'm thinking, but I'll bet it wasn't what I really was thinking: they wouldn't be so hastily incinerating something if it was dead, would they?

Alarmist and inaccurate story

[hung_himself]

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.

Lab Worker Comments

[sdstowell]

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.