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Vaccine Effective Against Avian Flu
FiReaNGeL writes "Researchers announced they have genetically engineered an avian flu vaccine from the critical components of the deadly H5N1 virus that completely protected mice and chickens from infection. This virus has thus far killed 80 people, devastated bird populations in Southeast Asia and Europe and caused for billions in damage through the world." Here's hoping it works on us, too.
In the dusty recesses of my memory, I seem to recall some experimentation where they sprayed benign bacteria on chickens. The theory goes that the competition for resources and the ample supply of non-harmful bacteria would reduce the sustainable population of harmful bacteria.
I find it interesting that being too clean of all bacteria can actually have harmful effects. We're really colony organisms after all. I wondered whatever happened with it?
Pessimists.net - as if life wasn't depressing enough.
Recently researchers were able to recreate the 1918 flu that killed 100 million around the world, and what they found was a little alarming. The 1918 flu jumped directly from birds to humans and became transmissable between humans.
If the current bird flu manages that, there will be an 18 month siege on the economy the likes of which our generations have never seen as borders are shut down and vital supply chains are broken.
Hopefully this new advance offers some hope. Who knows if a pandemic will happen (well, one will happen without a doubt because they have on average every 30 years for the last 300, but we just don't know if this bird flu is the next one), it's just a roll of the dice everytime a human gets infected whether it will mutate.
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Influenza, however, combines most of the worst things into a single virus. It is an RNA virus, so it mutates rapidly. It has a tiny genome, providing a minimal target for the adaptive immune system. It spreads easily through the air, allowing less-ill carriers to spread it widely (the Tyhoid Mary effect). It starts out by pretending to be the common cold, so carriers ignore it and continue to expose the community. Very few disease organisms combine these factors, and most of those that do (measles, smallpox, diptheria) are mercifully vulnerable to vaccines.
Because the potential is real and quantified, not blindy extrapolated from fears. Influenza does regularly sweep across the world, leaving death and destruction in its wake. It does regularly kill people even in wealthy countries. The 1918 pandemic did send millions of strong, healthy adults to their deaths.Certain strains are right now killing strong, healthy adults. Certain other strains do right now have the molecular factors for extreme transmissibility. It is an absolute guarantee that those strains will fuse in a single infected person, producing a new strain that has both virulence and transmissibility. When that happens, we will have another 1918-style pandemic on our hands.
And unless we can rapidly turn-around production of a strong vaccine, that pandemic will strike down millions of us. On the basis of missed work days alone, it makes sense to pour billions of dollars into preventing a flu pandemic.