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Researchers Reconstruct 1918 Flu Virus
Gnpatton writes "CNN is running a story on how researchers have recreated the gene sequence for the 1918 virus which claimed 50 million lives. The mapping for the gene sequence was found on a victim frozen in Alaskan permafrost. From the article: 'Using a technique called reverse genetics, the Mount Sinai researchers used the genetic coding to create microscopic, virus-like strings of genes, called plasmids.'" Researchers are hoping that reconstructing a virus like this will help them to better understand similar problems. The structure was originally determined earlier this year.
... (no pun intended). What in earth can make scientists behave so irresponsible. They eliminated smallpox from almost all laboratories a few years ago to make sure it could never be used again. Now they are reviving an old virus that was completely eradicated. This does not make sense, other than for the nobel-prize signs in the scientists eyes (which they should not get).
What if this secured facility gets compromised, an accident happens that leads to the infection of one of the staff, testtubes are improperly sterilized. I could name hundreds of things that could go wrong, and will not even start wildly speculating what would happen if 5HN1 somehow mutates with this virus.
Ofcourse, I am not a biomedical researcher, but some common sense tells me one thing: don't start digging in shit if you can't stand the smell.
I am in favor of medical progress, but recreating extinct live viri should be absolutely banned.
Then again, this article is hugely outdated, as a simple wikipedia article tells us they recreated the virus in 2002 already. That leads to an even more doubtful stance on the exact reasons for creating this particular strain today...
Maybe we should start detonating H-bombs above ground again to see if we can learn something new from that ?
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Because, you know, it's a good idea to recreate things that took millions of deaths to defeat.
"reconstruct any virus you like guys.. NO NOT THAT ONE!!! ARGH!"
Bill gates can fix this quicker than the Linux Community. You assholes.
you infect the flu!
They never consider if they should do something only if they can do it. This bug could end life on the planet Earth for man if it were to escape during this time of frequent flights and fast travel.
Karma: a simple way of silencing those with unpopular views regardless how correct or just that view might be.
But...please try to stick to things that can easily be killed with the tip of well-placed soldering iron.
Zombies Require headshots, headshots, headshots!
So creation of a custom tailored flu has been authorized to make sure there is an eradication of any opposition to the conservative agenda
Heres another article at the BBC
& page=1
:(
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4308872.stm
and another one from ABC news, about how they in their enlightened wisdom (read fearmongering) think that the asian birdflu will result in similar problems.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Flu/story?id=1183172
i would have posted as ANON but aparently 212 minutes since i last posted a comment is not enough time to wait between comments
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Didn't RTFA of course, but was it the CIA or Al Queda?
What caught my eye in the summary was the comment, "Researchers are hoping that reconstructing a virus like this will help them to better understand similar problems."
Yea, like reconstructing some other plague? Just what we all need.
.. in getting them to cure the darn cold I currently have.
Let's see here...
...
God creates man.
God creates flu.
Flu kills man.
God creates new man.
New man creates flu.
And what do you think comes next?
Seriously, this is really borderline sadistic when scientists recreate a virus responsible for killing 50 million people to "better understand the threat of a future worldwide epidemic from bird flu." Why don't we at the same time resurrect Hitler so that we can "better understand the threat of a future worldwide sadistic totalitarian dictator/terrorist"? Hmm? How would that sound to the public?
We all know where this will lead...
time to read up on Stephen King's "The Stand", to catch up on those survival techniques.... now here's hoping I'm one of that particulat fraction of society..
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
Rebuilding an entire genetic sequence like this seems like a lot of room for mishaps. It's one thing to modify an existing sequence, and another to build up from scratch. How will researchers confirm that their new "baby" isn't some mutant Frankenstein-monster strain? Will they infect someone and then watch the symptoms, to compare against the epidemic accounts?
It's in my very own city.
I'll let everyone know how everything goes if it ev
Being the exceedingly paranoid type, let me ask this - if we found a victim frozen in the permafrost, and viruses don't die by freezing - is it likely that some guy might actually contract this virus again and cause another catastrophe ?. Maybe some warm summer it gets into the water table or something.
However safe the experiment in itself might have been, external contamination if the virus is out there is a serious concern. Half of Europe is immune to some strains of typhoid and plague, thanks to natural selection. But these days viruses can travel on jet airliners , in business class - they are not limited to the region of previous occurrence.
Hopefully the current healthy diets, good healtcare and lack of a recent war should ensure that another Spanish Flu breakout cannot happen.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Indeed. Well, just to head off about 90% of the comments which will be "oh noes the scientists will kill us all!", they are putting the DNA into plasmids, not a virus capsule. The only way this presents a danger is if they put ALL the DNA in together with the correct promoter and deliberately infected it into a mammalian host, and even then there's little chance.
Put another way, we are much more at risk from Asian Bird Flu than we are from this virus.
Incidentally, how is Avian Flu being reported in america? Here in Aus we don't hear much, even though I (and the WHO) are convinced it's the next big pandemic.
Personally I'm much more scared of avian flu than terrorists...
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
There's an interesting TV show (Canadian, no less) called Regenesis that featured just such a concept.
Hooked me for a few episodes.
$0.02 (CDN)
What were they thinking? That this is an amazingly bad idea is so clear I just can't help believing in the ramifications. As things weren't bad enough with the pandemia risk of the bird's flu!
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"Almost" doesn't cut it. And if you think the former Soviet Union (and former United States) really eliminated their last reserves of the virus, you're seriously deluded.
> Now they are reviving an old virus that was completely eradicated. This does not make sense, other than for the nobel-prize signs in the scientists eyes (which they should not get).
The 1918 pandemic strain killed off the most vulnerable portion of the population three or four generations ago. Subsequently, mutations to that strain that were less virulent than the original appeared. These less-virulent strains didn't kill their hosts as quickly (and often, didn't kill the host at all!), and turned out to be better-adapted to their environment than the original. These less-virulent strains worked their way throughout the rest of the population. The world ended up with a not-so-bad version of the flu, and a relatively high resistance in the surviving population. All in all, a lousy environment for the original or the less-virulent strains to propagate.
Don't worry about the 1918 flu getting out. First, it almost certainly won't. Second, if it does, it won't be nearly as bad as it was in 1918, largely due to the fact that anyone who was highly vulnerable to it had been ejected from the gene pool by 1920.
> I could name hundreds of things that could go wrong, and will not even start wildly speculating what would happen if 5HN1 somehow mutates with this virus.
Don't worry about an H5N1 recombination (or reassortment) with the 1918 flu. You'd need someone to be simultaneously infected with both viruses. The probability of that is vanishingly small. (As is the probability of the 1918 flu escaping and setting up a reservoir population in birds or pigs.)
Worry about a human-to-human transmissible evolution of H5N1. If the strain currently fiddling around Jakarta is reproducing by means of human to human transmission, and if that strain is doing so via casual contact (to date, it appears that most cases from this cluster involve zoo visitors, their immediate families, and health care workers -- so we don't yet have confirmation of h2h transmission, let alone via casual contact), then worry.
If a human-to-human transmissible of H5N1 shows up, and if it's as lethal to humans as the version currently floating around Asia, you're looking at somewhere between 100M and 300M dead before a weaker variant evolves.
Next I think they should revive some extinct species of mosquito.
At least the strains aren't armed with poisonous darts! :)
Why would you want to re-create anything like that!? It killed lots of people before it was stopped and they're recreating it!? Who's next, Terrorists saying, "Shit, we don't need to steal any of the last remaining small pox from the lab! We'll just create our own and unleash it on all infadels!"
Gentlemen, let me applaud your tenacity, know how, and stupidity! May you be the first to suffer death from your new creation as a reminder that you shouldn't try to play God.
Generation Trance: What generation are you?
...I said pursue medical interest with caution. And I did put in the subject of retesting H-bombs above ground again for a reason: This is not ANY virus, this is a virus that killed of millions of people, our ancestors so to speak. You can test live viri, just stay clear of some of them.
As a compromise: at least put forward your testing before a medical and ethical committee before you start your experiments...
Being ignorant in experimenting with death is illogical.
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I understand the potential gains we can make from this study. I know the work is important. But I don't trust the people doing the research. The military. These are the same bozos that brought us weaponized anthrax nerve gas and the nuclear bomb a host of other clever things.
You let this jeanie out of the bottle, even a little bit, even with the best intentions and you have potential to depopulate a good chunk of the planet. Last time it killed more people than died in WWII. And they didn't have modern air-travel. Just what is the cost / risk ratio here?
And this assumes good intntions. What if some military committee decides to "study" weaponizing it? In the name is national security, of course. And in secret.
We just learned how to do this stuff. Let's think twice before actually doing it. Measure twice, cut once.
Paraphrasing Oppenheimer: We spent so much energy thinking about *how* to make the bomb, that we didn't stop to ask *whether* we should do it at all.
It would only kill some obese Americans anyway. Not like anybody gives a fuck.
Ahhhhhhhhhh Choooooo!!!!!
*sniffle*
What?
Just curious, what's the security around places like this? If these guys can hack a virus strain like this, what's the keep someone from stealing the virus and releasing back into the wild?
In Communist Russia The Flu Virus Reconstructs YOU.
A: Yes. In TFA it says that one of the reasons this was approved is because it is believed that human's still poses immunity which was passed down from our ancestors in 1918.
This is exactly the kind of situation that leads to things like the T-Virus.
Time to brush up on a little reading.
"There are more important things than stopping terrorism. Upholding the Constitution is one of them." - Ars Forumer.
http://www.tv.com/numb3rs/vector/episode/382456/su mmary.html
cough cough cough ahchooo cough cough
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
There was a report a couple of weeks ago that the first fatalities due to the avian flu in the US had occured. Way into the report it came out that both victims were in their 80's. A stiff breeze would have finished them off.
It must really disappoint the media when stuff like this doesn't rack up the body coutn. Hell, you'd think they'd have learned a lesson when SARS made them look like assholes, but I guess not.
Isn't this epidemic researched to "death" already?
Anyway, this research seems to be pretty safe knowing we are already immune or have access to anti-viral for it.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
The press doesn't harp on it much, but anytime they mention it they call it the next big pandemic. National Geographic covers it in the current issue, and they've got a little presentation about it on their website.
And the brethren went away edified.
which were killed by the viruses. Nuff sed.
Oh well, what the hell...
Now finding out that the 1918 outbreak was related to avian flu is great, but even if that helps to create medicines that slow/stop the spread or symptoms we have other critical issues to worry about. If we cannot even work together for our fellow citizens and for what is left of our Constitution, then what makes somebody think a pandemic situtation would be anything short of another critical failure? Sure the medical side for advances would be nice, but we still have major foundation issues to address. It may be a good thing to put out a fire burning in your speeding car, but that really won't matter when you speed right off an unfinished bridge into a deep chasm.
"You can make this argument about any virus."
Yeah but this particular virus killed over 50 million people.... Not quite the same as playing around with a virus that will only give you the sniffles.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I wouldn't be terribly confident about that immunity from almost 90 years ago. If you're a big believer in it, you should be the first to volunteer to be injected with the virus. There's probbably more immunity to it in the populace than their was in 1918, but we've had almost 3 generations to lose any genetic immunity to this strain of flu.
AccountKiller
One of the best TV shows to come out of Canada recently was ReGenesis (available from better bittorrent sites everywhere).
The first season had lots of stuff going on that seems to have foreshadowed recent developments in real life - the recovery of a live sample of this same flu virus, from a victim in the permafrost plays a key role in the story. An outbreak or two of Marburg Hemmoragic Fever was also major plot device.
>
> One hundred forty-six volunteers were randomized to receive a placebo or an allicin-containing garlic supplement [
Ah, Garlic. Best vegetable ever. The antisocial geek's friend.
I prefer my garlic the old-fashioned way. One head of garlic (peel, squeeze through garlic press or otherwise grind it into mush), raw, whipped into one stick (1/4 lb) of butter. Spread over bread (cheese optional), toast, eat. Throw a teaspoon or two into a bowl of piping hot pasta (and grate some real Parmigiana Reggiano over it, none of that powdered cheese in a can crap). As a side dish, slug down a glass or two of red wine.
Take another head of garlic, peel it, and toss 3/4 of the cloves into a whole raw chicken. Slip the rest of the cloves between the skin and the meat. Roast tha mothaplucka. Good eatin' again.
(Whenever you roast a chicken, just throw another head of garlic into the oven next to the chicken. When the chicken's done, squeeze the now-mushy cooked garlic into a small jar. Dip a hunk of fresh artisan bread into the garlic mush, and then into some extra virgin olive oil. Yet more good eatin'!)
Some people think I eat too much garlic. Not true. Only once have I eaten so much garlic in a single sitting that I've been able to smell garlic on my farts for the next three days.
People at the office tend to avoid me. In fact, if I eat enough of the stuff (see above), even people whose noses are stuffed up with the flu tend to avoid me.
Haven't had a cold in two years. Funny how things works out. Must be the garlic.
Damn, I love garlic.
This sounds vaguely similar to a plot line of the TV show Regenesis from TMN (Canadian Cable). Interesting.
I think this is a great idea. They are not making a virus, just peices of it, I don't see any problem at all. I recommend full steam ahead. It's really all going to boil down to the Doritos slogan, "If Not Now When?" Seems to make sense to me.
Exactly. Also, you may be interested to know that aquired immunity (such as what you get when you survive an infection, or get a vaccine) is not carried in the germline, ie can not be inherited.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
He was born in 1900, so he turned 18 in 1918, just in time to get drafted and sent to Europe. I don't think he ever saw action - the war ended before he got there. So they put him on a ship to come back.
Then they wouldn't let him off the ship. They left the ship anchored in Philadelphia harbor, waiting out the influenza epidemic.
Now, the story as I recall it was that they wouldn't let the soldiers off the ship because they were afraid that the epidemic would kill them. But now I wonder if they wouldn't let them off because they were afraid that the soldiers might be carrying the disease. They would be very effective at infecting the population as they returned to their homes all over the country.
But if they really were worried about 18-year-olds in fighting condition getting infected and dying... wow. It was a very serious disease.
to deal with the aging baby boomers. Now their plan to spend more and more and cut taxes will be economically viable!
or not.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Im assuming they're not doing anything too dangerous here, but if they were, its comforting to know that their research lab probably had several security funding cuts over the last few years (who needs security?) and the working practices of the staff probably include such classics as propping the doors open for the cleaners and not locking the safe because 'the boss keeps forgetting the code'.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Not in the sense it doesn't exist any more. It still is kept alive by the USA an Russia, who keep the virus alive for biological warfare, either defensive or offensive depending on weither they're winning or losing the war (yeah, it's mostly in their heads, but war is sick from the beginning anyway).
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Forgive me for being cold but the black blague sent us back over 200 years.
Yes its nice to characterize this virus but it looks like our genetics have the advantage. In a very cold statistical manor.
Not to distract from the research which is important but this is not the end of humanity.
A well placed soldering iron kills 99.9% of all known germs including flu viruses.
Actually, reconstructing the viral genome from scratch LESSENS the danger of unexpected elements in the sequence. The entire thing was put together from artificially constructed DNA of known sequence, making the process extremely controlled. At the end, the researchers knew exactly what they had down to the last base pair, and the goal was to accurately recreate the 1918 flu virus. So that's what they produced. If their virus was not just like the original 1918 strain, their research is not very helpful to the fields of epidemiology or virology.
Freedom: "I won't!"
take over if an outbreak similar to the Spanish flu virus happens. While he say's "he's not predicting" anything, he wants the military to take control of the quarentine effort in case it does.
...
"A call by President George W. Bush for Congress to give him the power to use the military in law enforcement roles in the event of a bird flu pandemic has been criticized as akin to introducing martial law."
"Giving the military a law enforcement role would be an "extraordinarily Draconian measure" that would be unnecessary if the nation had built the capability for rapid vaccine production, ensured a large supply of anti-virals like Tamiflu and not allowed the degradation of the public health system.
"The translation of this is martial law in the United States," Redlener said."
ethics to ethicticians?
No, you need to check your meds (I am not whom you were replying to, BTW, but you didn't need to be nasty to that person, you freekin dipsquat). "Scientists" have been proven over the years to be "human", as in just as likely to blunder, pull a boner, screw up, failit, or be evil, or be quite susceptible to questionable "orders" from political madmen or to be bribed or blackmailed or coerced or just be greedy and sign off on any number of retarded schemes just for a big fat check because of greed, exactly the same as anyone else.
We should NEVER just blindly trust some group A, in this case "Scientists" just because they say so. For instance, I remember just a host of "scientists" swearing up and down and sideways that agent orange was "totally safe and only harmful to plants". And if you want more examples, man, they exist in plenty.
Sorry, your guild is just as corrupt and stupid and potentially evil as any other guild, so just get over it,and admit reality. "Scientists" have BOTH given us some of our most valuable treasures, and ALSO created by accident or design some of the most horrible things imaginable. They are NOT all peaceful and competent holy men.
Not necessarily. There might be less lethal derivatives of this flu which we've all ready been exposed to just in the last few years. There are many variables that come into play in just regards to our immune systems and the virus itself.
Some of the variables are the innate immune defenses (arguably most influenced by genetics of person) of the immune system, the acquired immune defenses (arguably least influenced by genetics in regards to a strain of virus survived by our ancestors) and a few more I can't name off the top of my head. For the virus theres issues like exposure and incubation times, mutation rate and more.
Needless to say, this virus could still pose a threat, but since the article said the genes were inside a plasmid (not an actual virus capsid) along with the other info others before have posted, fearing over it is most likely unneeded.
Chances are, they have as many self-powered, automated, ventilators as they have intensive care beds, which in most community hospitals is perhaps a dozen.
If a more than a few dozen patients show up with rapidly fulminating viral pneumonia, (the main cause of death in the avian flu), they whole system is quickly overwhelmed.
Supposedly, the government has hundreds, (thousands ?) of ventilators on standby for just such an emergency (or terrorist act). Look at what happened in New Orleans recently for a live example. Hospital staff were keeping people alive with small self inflating (Ambu) bags. It takes one person to a patient, every minute of the day to keep them alive that way. That person squeezing the bag can't do much else either.
If you get it, chances are good that you're going to die.
The news is full of stuff about how deadly the bird flu will be when it strikes. Now, the news says that the 1918 flu was linked to bird flu. But those of us who are over 40 remember the same sort of talk back in 1976...about 'swine flu.' Swine flu killed healthy soldiers at Fort Dix, NJ in 1976 and was alleged to be the same as the 1918 flu that killed millions. As a result, the president at the time (Ford) ordered a program of national vaccination for every man, woman and child in the United States. Most people received the 'swine flu' shot which made most who received it a little sick for 1 or 2 days. Then the swine flu didn't appear and everyone forgot about it. Now, supposedly the '1918 flu' is coming back again in the form of 'bird flu' so I have some questions:
1) Why isn't the current president ordering vaccinations for everyone? The technology of making flu vaccines is pretty routine, even if the flue is alleged to be unusually lethal. Instead, President Bush is talking about imposing martial law and using the military to quarantine those portions of the country where the bird flu strikes.
2) Why is the 1976 vaccine that was allegedly protective against the '1918 flu' not being resuscitated and updated to be used in 2005?
The mapping for the gene sequence was found on a victim frozen in Alaskan permafrost.
So you're telling me that this guy was walking around rural Alaska with the gene sequence all mapped out and written down on paper, died from the flu whose gene sequence for which he was carrying the mapping, was frozen with the paper on him, was found 87 years later, and credited with having the gene mapping all along?
I'm sorry, that just sounds a little far-fetched. Isn't it more likely that the mapping for the gene sequence was produced by modern scientists using genetic material found on a victim frozen in Alaskan permafrost?
Read your history. The 1918 Spanish Infuenza was particulary deady among 16-34 year olds. It isn't the flu, but the body's overreaction that killed people by filling their lungs with liquid. It was the vigor of their immune systems that killed the victims.
Think global, act loco
Clyde Lewis is currently without a talk show on the radio, but he still gives local talks and for the past couple weeks he has been talking about an Avian Flu Pandemic this winter, and the Flu Pandemic of 1918. (I posted a journal entry yesterday, without explanation, just as a history lession. I might follow up with an explanation soon for the Journal circuit.)
OK, he is a conspiracy nut, but dispite the entertainment value, he also does provide a lot of interesting insights.
Other stuff that is going on right now is a steady increase in the cost of natural gas and heating oil, and post-Katrina, people are more accepting of Martial Law, or at least we are being told we would now accept it.
I need to research some more stuff, like the claim that only 6% of FEMA's budget is spent on Emergency Managment, but here is Clyde Lewis' new article on Katrina. And some might also dismiss Alex Jones as a conspiracy nut, but here is what he had to say about Avian Flu and Martial Law.
Take it with a grain of salt but this could prove to be useful information.
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
Say hello to my little sig.
People catch colds when it's cold out, not because of the temperature, but because they tend to stay indoors and socialize more. Colds spread by being in close contact with others with colds.
So garlic helps keep people from being in close contact with each other, and therefore prevents colds.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
What are you worried about, it claimed 50 million lives. It ran it's course, it'd get 25 million lives max if it gets back out, there probably aren't even enough hosts left to effectively transmit it anymore so it's more likley going to only affect thousands. Wait a few hundred years and then say OMFG a deadly virus.
Man kills God, of course.
I, for one, welcome our new viral ***aaaaaCHOOO!***
ok, maybe I don't welcome ****COUGH***
Ah crap...
A lot of it was moved around by military troops.
As it started there were a lot of people with low resistanced packed tightly together.
Finally, we now understand that part of the reason people died was that their immune systems over-reacted and killed them-- old people survived at a higher rate than young people with vigorous immune systems- we could probably suppress that these days.
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It was bad stuff tho, you could basically liquify as your cells unzipped and dumped antibodies. Entire towns were wiped out. Wild animals were a big problem.
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Cities that survived did so by shutting out any visitors (food/etc was delivered to a spot outside of town/your building- no human contact).
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Today- we'd probably have a fierce die off. The dying wouldn't get us as badly as the shutting down of commerce- we depend heavily for things to be brought to us.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Do I need to download the latest Trend Micro security update so as to not get this virus?
Not exactly what I want to hear, having a flu right now and all.............
Then again I just came back from Korea a week ago.........and they're having this Avian flu issue.
*cough* FEATHERS?!?
In soviet russia, virus reconstructs YOU!
Can't resist the Tiptree ref. The other short story that comes to mind is New Rose Hotel.
Those who read science fiction are condemned to repeat it."
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
this will help them to better understand similar problems
Such as killing 75 million people? Of course the technological/technical issues sure have a broader range of potential applications, but right now I can't think of any.
IIRC it was a somewhat long and debated decision when the last batch of smallpox was destroyed, but all in all it was considered a good thing. Why should we go the other way round?
Let me interpret that for you:
Our immunity against this disease sucks.
If we even have an immunity, that is.
Of course big pharma will make a lot of money.
So it's all okay.
Except that, of course, they can not manufacture it fast enough to contain an outbreak if an outbreak were to occur. It would spread quickly while they struggle to find enough material (chickens) to manufacture adequate amounts. You can't go from a few hundred to a few million vials overnight. The pox can.
(On a political note, the rich would be okay, because they'll be able to buy blackmarket anti-virals. The poor can be fucked, as always.)
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Why, back in my day, I had to trudge through twenty miles of snow every day for forty years before I could catch the flu. But nowdays, getting the flu is so easy when you young'uns have your "reverse genetics" and other voodoo magic tricks.
Did you every think that? Uh? But then again as the old saying goes "Life will find a way"
At least I read this story on Digg this morning, so I have already gotten my vaccine while you Slashdot readers scamper to your local flu clinic for the vaccination (which is now in short supply due to the late breaking news here).
Poor dead slashdotters...if only the news had been here earlier!
Let's put the facts together on this one...
A. The goverment is saying we should be afraid of the "Bird flu"
B. The government is re-creating the most deadly virus in recent history, which seems to be related to the "bird Flu"
C. The government is actively being lobbied by drug companies
The only logical conclusion is that the government is manufacturing this virus and is going to "accidentally" release it to the population to make us afraid and have to buy the vaccination. This game plan by the government/drug companies will generate millions in revenues for the drug companies.
You, are becoming Gods. There's a new master of creation, and it's you! Unraveled DNA, and at the same time you're cultivating bacteria strong enough to kill every living thing! Do you think you are ready for that much power? You lot? You lot? Cheeky bastards. You're running around science like kids with guns, creating a new world, while the world you've got is stinking, but, hands up, hands up anyone who thinks you've got it right. Yeah, there's always one. I can see you. If you want the position of God then take the responsibility.
... the quote just seemed apt somehow
by thrill12 (711899) * Alter Relationship on Wednesday October 05, @03:28PM (#13725653) ... (no pun intended). What in earth can make scientists behave so irresponsible. They eliminated smallpox [who.int] from almost all laboratories a few years ago to make sure it could never be used again.
g ursky_smallpox.html
----
Some think that smallpox is not gone...
Although WHO subsequently allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to retain samples of variola,2 the etiological agent of smallpox, the disease began fading from the memories of most Americans.
Nearly a quarter century later, the disease has entered U.S. consciousness once again as intelligence suggests that other countries besides the two depositary nations have retained or obtained variola.
http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/Articles/
Has anyone considered that if a bug like this got loose it could actually save the human race?
Overpopulation is a major problem. Since we have no natural predators, our only population control is through disease and war.
There are absolutely too many people, and that ugly fact is shown through the increased levels of pollution and habitational squalor throughout the world.
The moral of my story? Don't get your panties in a wad because people might die. After all, we don't really die anyway. We just change forms and go to a (hopefully) nicer place. Less of us walking around in this form would do the planet some good.
Ok, now this is getting bizarre. This week's episode of ReGenesis on CTV dealt with the old Spanish Flu virus being recovered from a corpse frozen in the permafrost of Nunavut. Either ReGenesis was dealing with very current information when it was scripted, the science teams are doing "No, it's really true!" reporting after the episodes, or someone isn't doing their fact checking.
http://www.regenesistv.com/
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Currently the virus can spread from bird to bird and from bird to human. However it does NOT spread from human to human
When the virus infects humans there is a very high fatality rate, and a brutal morbidity(needing hospitilization) rate. This is the first strain (N1) of its type (H5) that we have encountered, so vaccines can't be produced. There is a fear that this "bird flu" H5N1 will mutate into a strain that can jump from human to human. This is a very real fear, as flu is known to make these jumps. Even conservative estimates place the death toll in the millions if a Human to Human H5N1 flu emerges.
Tamiflu and Releenza are anti-virals that have been suggested as treatments for H5N1, however there are some reports that these treatments have been inneffective, with only mild attenuation of viral load. However Tamiflu and Releenza are the only available known treatments available, and these drugs are in short supply.
Hope this helps
Storm
I think we're looking at some dark days.
Any disease that has been finally eradicated from the planet by means of global vaccination programmes (read: decades of hard, dedicated work) is stored in a lab somewhere and even sometimes escapes.
Although the majority of that work is benign, I find it telling that we have much more awareness of bio weapons than before - just ask yourself why.
As a previous poster said, our tolerance to such an 'old' disease sucks because we haven't been exposed to it for a couple of generations, so just imagine what happens when it is then re-introduced deliberately.
The worst bit is that there will always be someone who thinks the release of such a disease for war purposes is containable (vaccines for the lucky few) so the risk is ever present - conspiracy theorists have flagged the characteristics of HIV as one that was just too closely matching a population group for comfort. Oh, and it'll be 'justified'.
*NOT* good news.
The moral of my story? Don't get your panties in a wad because people might die. After all, we don't really die anyway. We just change forms and go to a (hopefully) nicer place.
Ummmm....no. Sorry to be the one to have to tell you, but you really do die, anyway. You do change forms when your previously living body is reduced to dust, but that's about the extent of it. If you really do believe that you'll go to a nicer place, go ahead and off yourself now, so we can get rid of one more stupid person on this planet.
There's a Pandemic Flu Awareness Week going on at http://www.fluwikie.com - a public health experiment: can we prepare from the trenches? Can we have the best cooperative information (and personal and community plans) available? There are links to preparation done all over the world - have you asked people around you how they are going to cope if such a thing emerges?
So, I guess my great grandfather died of bird flu. How comforting.
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
Apparently they are looking at some kind of black oil based virus, according to a Cigerette Smoking Man anyways
Do you poster have any idea what happens when 30% of more of a population gets an infection like this? The medical system is overwhelmed. You are instructed to stay home and deal with it, or die. You are better off at home, because the hospitals are the best bet to get sick. My grandfather lived through the 1918 epidemic. An infected house tied a white rag on their door. Once a day the fire department would fill a pot full of thin soup if left near the curb. The dead was picked up and buried in a communal grave. The state militia had orders to shoot anyone attempting to leave the town. What makes you think it would be any different today? All the meds would be gone in a few days. Can you imagine the economic fallout today of a pandemic?
It's nice to have another smudgepot in the fuds arsenal, isn't it? My money is still on smallpox, however. Or if that's mutated into mildness these days, on the Russian-strain tuberculosis bacterials. My none-too-subtle point, if you can call it that, is how does a campaign to reconstruct the worst plague in human history get funded, anyway? Basic research? Black ops? The next phase in reassurance, of course, is pointing out that reconstructing a DNA sequence is not the same as reconstructing DNA, which is kept under the strictest security anyway. I know I sleep soundly.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Yes you can make this argument about any virus. And the argument is, the fewer viruses we have like this the better! If you want to think along these people's ideas then
I think that there was a Numb3rs about this very same issue last season wasn't there. Bottom line, in my opinion, is that the scientists should work with less virulent viruses to see what makes them tick
Ok, off to eat a bullet. Thanks for the advice and all. See you later...ummm...wait...I guess you won't be there.
It's not really surprising how deeply rooted the "virus equals evil" idea is in most people, but some of the comments here are nothing more than FUD.
First of all: this virus was never "eradicated". There was no vaccine, no miracle drug. Influenza is an RNA virus, so it mutates very quickly. Many of today's influenza viruses are actually descendants of the spanish flu. And they're usually more successful because they're not very deadly.
1918 was just the perfect time for a deadly pandemic. The economy was a mess, there was a major war going on and people were hungry all over the Western world. The spanish flu spread like wildfire and infected virtually everyone, but the human species is genetically diverse enough to (as a whole) survive even the worst viruses. For one, there are hundreds of different versions of Major Histocompatibily Complexes among us.
You have one, 99% chance your neighbour has another, each with a different specialization. The spanish flu probably killed a lot of people with the MHC especially unsuited for fighting it.
MHC evolution and genetic diversity
It may sound ridiculous, but viruses of the past likely made us human in the first place. The human genome contains proteins that might have been useful to survive prehistoric plagues, but perform different functions today. For examply, you might have a protein that happens to bind rather strongly to a viral anchor protein from 900 million years ago, but with a minor mutation it might just as well facilitate mammalian cellular respiration.
And then there's retroviruses. Since those can be inherited through infected germline cells, it can become very interesting for a virus to become mutually symbiotic (a dead host doesn't reproduce all that well, now does it).
Chimp caught a virus, became human
Some environmentalists like to call the human species a virus. They may be right in an entirely unintended way: a substantial part of our genome consists of viral DNA.
I for one welcome our old virus overlords.
Most posters are either missing the point or having their posts suppressed. The only reason for creating this is for use as a military weapon against a civilian population where spread control measures are less effective. Military populations are taken from the healthiest of citizens and this health is maintained through good practices backed up by military discipline to maintain consistancy in application. Military populations are also the first to get vaccines and treatments, any treatments! Treatments whether they have gone through 'routine safety and effectiveness tests' or not; preferably not, as then drug resistances will have less chance to arise and reduce treatment effectness. Legally imposed tests, which can last years, are subject to court delays as competitors seek advantages for their versions, and are done to guarantee safety for the producers' copyright registrations, patents, and trademarks and limited marketing agreements and not for the safety of the criminally suffering public that those regulations were hypocritically purported to serve!
That it took over two years for this fact of this reconstruction to finally come to light is itself a kind of verification in itself of its military intent. Supporting facts are that our Administration, the American administration charged with the responsibility of keeping our population safe, has requested the use of the military inside the country. It has done so by requesting Congress to change the Posse Comitatus Act passed shortly after the War Between the States to prevent the abuses of the Union Army's rape of the South from ever happening again. Those crimes are extensive and well documented, besides being passed down from generation to generation of Southerners who learned to say 'damm yankee' before they learned even to walk and who go to the movies repeatedly to see "Gone With the Wind". Go see "Gone With the Wind"! This 1937 classic should be in most video stores as no one has seen fit to repress it......YET! This seemingly innocent change in the law can and will have major effect on this country. In every desk drawer of every officer of all our armed forces ranked Colonel and above (O-6 and above) are 'Oplans' (Operation Plans) that have existed since the early 1950's (Internal Security Act of 1950) They detail the declaration of Martial Law nationwide due to some "emergency" and go on to plan for: the suspension of the Constitution 'for the duration'; the separation of the nation into military districts, five at last count, each commanded by a General; the actions of these commanders will be instant and have no review; citizens will have no civil rights. Bird flu, whether from without from enemy action of act of nature or from intentional sowing in our poor districts from our own military will be a closely held military and business monopoly secret. The first evidence that civilians will have will be when they see their friends get sick and die in large numbers....and then find out that they cannot leave thier areas because of suddenly appearing military isolation cordons around their communities. Those soldiers will have orders to shoot to kill anyone who attempts to leave or enter and probably anyone who attempts to publicize their presence or why. That is the only way the military can be effectively involved in fighting an epidemic, and the suspension of the rights of man even to life itself is the only effective legal environment in which they can plausibly operate. The one to watch now is the survival of Senator McCain, a Republican to be sure, but one who is first a veteran who knows, truly knows, what it means to be persecuted. He was a prisoner of the North Viet-Namese Army. This would be a huge crime against the American people. To minimize risk of failure of the Administration's plans, lists are probably being drawn up now of targeted civilians. These are people who know what is happening and are not afraid to tell about it. Those few reports that do get out will be refused publication by the
Another release of Resident Evil to me.......
Wow, it's like the plot of ReGenesis come alive. I suppose that's because they already knew how researchers were putting the virus DNA back together when they wrote last years overarching plot line, but still, I'm impressed at how the science seems to be accurate and well-conveyed. I wonder when (if) season 2 will appear.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I wonder how the Intelligent Design guys plan to explain this virus.. why in the bloody heavens did a creator create this virus..
The day the government forces me to take a mercury containing thymerisol vaccine is the end of freedom in this country. Not to mention that the sv40 cancer strain keeps popping up in those vaccines! Pesky thing!
http://www.viewzone.com/sv40.html
What a perfect pretext for extermination that elites want.
Have a black ops group drop a chemical weapon on a city then claim the "bird flu is here!" and then start forcibly vaccinating people with deadly chemicals. And of course, just to keep you safe they'll need to have gun confiscation like in New Orleans!
Doesn't anyone else see what's going on here?
http://www.armyofthefrog.org/
This is a frightening scenario, more so having read similar opinion throughout the Internet.