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WHO Investigates Claims That Swine Flu Resulted From Human Error
Tom DBA writes "Bloomberg reports on claims that the swine flu could have been accidentally made in a lab, which are now being investigated by the World Health Organization. Quoting: 'Adrian Gibbs, 75, who collaborated on research that led to the development of Roche Holding AG's Tamiflu drug, said in an interview today that he intends to publish a report suggesting the new strain may have accidentally evolved in eggs scientists use to grow viruses and drugmakers use to make vaccines. Gibbs said that he came to his conclusion as part of an effort to trace the virus's origins by analyzing its genetic blueprint. ... Gibbs and two colleagues analyzed the publicly available sequences of hundreds of amino acids coded by each of the flu virus's eight genes. ... [The CDC's Nancy Cox says] since researchers don't have samples of swine flu viruses from South America and Africa, where the new strain may have evolved, those regions can't be ruled out as natural sources for the new flu.'"
Time has a related story evaluating the World Health Organization's response to H1N1.
My minions! We are discovered!
We must now shift gears from a swine flu pandemic to sharks! With frickin' LASER BEAMS!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I suppose even a stopped clock might be right twice a day. But still, there's a difference between man-made on purpose, and man-made by accident/human error. So all the tinfoil hat wearing brigade, can hold off on the "I told you so's".
So the virus is found in the poor countryside of Mexico...
And someone thinks it was created somewhere in a lab?
I've heard some far out conspiracy theories, but creating a mild flu in a lab and then transported out to Colillacarajo, Mexico? That's just dumb.
Umbrella Corporation releases an apology saying its really, really sorry for unleashing the pandemic flu on the world. They do however guarantee they are taking the appropriate steps to ensure nothing like this will ever happen again.
It's the American way, don't you know.
In my other life, I eat cats.
"[The CDC's Nancy Cox says] since researchers don't have samples of swine flu viruses from South America and Africa, where the new strain may have evolved, those regions can't be ruled out as natural sources"
But let's start spreading those conspiracy theories anyway!
Just waiting for a deaf mute, a #1 hit rock star, an unemployed factory worker and a knocked up teen to come out of the woodwork to fight a demon that wears cowboy boots.
Better known as 318230.
-1 crazed conspiracy theory
If so it didn't work very well...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Obligatory nod to the fictional Captain Trips. Welcome to the real world. In other news, I'll be relocating to Boulder shortly...
Blacker than my baby girl's stare. Black like the veil that the muslimina wear. Black like the planet that they fear...
I mentioned this when the media was powering up the hysteria machine.
Many government stockpiles of Tamiflu from the last pandemic that according to the "experts" was dead set going to "wipe us out" (lol) are expiring right now. Many governments were *not* going to restock to previous levels due to the enourmous cost.
Guess that's changed now huh?
Roche might just have the best marketing department in the world. Even better than Merck - Just incase *anybody* tries to make excuses that nobody would stoop so low as to do as the article suggests on purpose, there's the type of entity being dealt with so check your "never attribute incompetence to malice" mindless drek at the door thanks (just preempting, sorry).
- Works a little to close to big pharma for comfort.
-1 crazed conspiracy theory
You must be new here. The crazed conspiracy theories are the best part of Slashdot.
Queen takes N1, checkmate.
A Virus of such evil that can make most of the population miserable for about a week. However because of a catchy name, and the few people who did die from it didn't quite fit the normal flu victim profile.
Such a thing must be a human fault for creating such a weapon of mass annoyance. Or... It could just be what happens naturally in the word.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The people who make Tamiflu released a virus into the wild so people would take Tamiflu . . .
'Viral Marketing'! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing
Tinfoil wearing crowd will never be right since some conspiracy plots simply aren't there, which doesn't prove or disprove any theory.
Since a large number of conspiracies happened, conspiracy deniers tout-court are in the same league of tinfoil wearing crowd.
Back in topic: there are wars for oil, there are environmental disasters, a virus released to raise some money isn't surprising at all.
There are other potential uses too: if economy collapses, crowds may gather with pitchforks the old fashioned way, a more virulent strain of H1N1 would force people to stay home instead.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
You know there's two things I've learned in my nearly 30 years on this earth.
Men often do evil things for money. Always have and always will. Now there's various scales of 'evilness' but near everyone does something at some stage that could be called evil by someone.
$5000 on the line will make some people murder and everyone accepts that.
Here's the weird thing:
$100,000,000 dollars on the line and a certain type of person thinks that *nobody* would kill for it. It's crazy! I mean you wouldn't even consider releasing a weak little flu on the world to get a taste of that sort of cash? If not that's great! Your a man of values. But there's a million men on the planet who *would* do it without a single shred of remorse.
Rapid anti-conspiracy nuts are as bad as rabid pro-conspiracy nuts. Both are absolutely delusional about the equally beautiful and grotesque mess that is called humanity.
And for god sakes man do you have *any* idea of some of the shit that big pharma has pulled over the years?? Something like this would hardly even be a stretch.
I was laughing about it (the conspiracy us government release of HIV story), until I talked to a friend of mine doing research in retroviruses... and he got a real thoughtful look on his face and said "you know..."
So, I wouldn't put it past anyone to release a virus... by mistake or on purpose.
30 years? Hmmm, that's about 0.000000007% of the age of the earth. I'd say you are qualified.
Not that I disagree with you, but let's face it: one other aspect of being human (in addition to your 'evil' conjecture), is that we believe not what the facts bear out but rather what the facts bear out that reinforces what we already believe.
In my almost 37 years I have realized that virtually nothing is 100% provable, and therefore virtually everything is open to some level of interpretation, depending on the interpreter's level of delusion.
No matter what "facts" are released to the public there will be people on both sides of the argument backing up their respective positions, and there will be nothing to convince them otherwise.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
Dude, you're Skeletor. You're not gonna be loved. Ever. Feared, maybe. Loathed, definitely. Loved? Keep dreaming.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Just because someone would do it doesn't mean they did it.
This would be a logic professors ultimate example of fallacies.
1) Because they would: they did.
2) Because 'anti-conspiracy' people are nut jobs: you can't argue they didn't release the flu.
3) Because some pharma companies did questionable things in the past: this company is doing questionable things now.
Your claims are backed by nothing but wild speculation and logically flawed arguments.
Well, when regular influenze kills ~40,000 americans a year, and this stuff makes headlines with 3 deaths.. You have to wonder who is benefiting.
-1 crazed conspiracy theory
And judging from the title they don't even seem to know WHO does the investigation. Sloppy journalism as well.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Actually perfectly rational events being labeled 'conspiracy theories' by smug self entitled 'intellectuals' who sit inside and push buttons to make other people rich all day and night is the best part of Slashdot.
Here's a 'crazy conspiracy theory' example:
A big pharma company released a drug that it knew caused more heart attacks than it stopped and when scientists started critising the drug the company drew up a hit list and set out to discredit and destroy the careers and lives of anybody on the list.
Slashdots initial response...
-1 crazed conspiracy theory
Then again the collective "wisdom" of Slashdot was 110% certain that the Ipod was going to be a complete flop so I guess that should say something of the level of understanding about reality here.
Please come hang out with me ;)
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
So, pretty much anywhere?
It would be incredibly stupid to release it near to the point of creation, and it would be even dumber to not take the tenth of a second to realize this before posting a comment on the subject. With that said, the smartest place to release it would probably be outside the lab of a competitor researching the same or a similar virus. But even more to the point, releasing a swine flu in Mexico is entirely plausible. If you broke it out in Switzerland you'd have a lot of work to do to convince people.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Even if this one isn't, scientists ARE creating lethal strains of H1N1 (aka Spanish Flu/Swine Flu) in the lab. In fact, in 2007, they succeeded in creating an H1N1 variant that kills monkeys in the same way Spanish Flu killed humans. They hope to study how to fight it off, so they will be prepared for another major pandemic. Now, I doubt very much that this is one of them. But don't assume they aren't making them, because they are, and it's not even a secret.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
"What the..? This is lemonade! What happened to my culture of amoebic dysentery?"
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
"according to the "experts" was dead set going to "wipe us out""
No expert ever said that.
You do carry the burden of ignorance pretty well.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
People doing evil things for money is not what makes conspiracy theories so unlikely to be true.
People do evil things for money all the time. People do evil things for free all the time, so we certainly don't need the added incentive of money.
Where the train goes off the rails is where a conspiracy theory requires that massive numbers of people are keeping their mouths shut about some grand plan that they're a small part of. That can be done for a short time, but eventually every secret that has more than about 3 people in on it comes out.
30 years? Hmmm, that's about 0.000000007% of the age of the earth.
That's .5% of Earth's age! Damn God-less American lies!
Anon because I played a role in what will be the official response to this claim.
This claim is bullshit. There is *no evidence* to support his claims.
Science progresses when you come up with a credible theory. It makes testable claims based on actual evidence, the current theories fail to explain it, and you have to come up with a new explanation.
This isn't that. This is just a silly idea. It generates press, it eats up valuable time from the members of the flu community, and it will amount to nothing.
No one denies that the current virus is weird. But weird doesn't mean man-made. This is not the first time that Adrian Gibbs has been at odds with the flu community, and he is yet to present credible scientific claim based on fact.
The burden of proof lies with the person who puts forward the wild idea. Once you know that reassortant viruses like this one have been in the swine population for at least the last 10 years, and that the most recent pandemic virus (1968) also came from swine, it is going to take a mountain of evidence to prove this.
It would be impossible to prove that this virus didn't come from a man-made source, so the tin-foil hat brigade will never be satisfied.
For the rest of the population - this is a media grab attempt, and has no basis in fact. Please treat it as such.
The drug cartels are rich. They get their weapons on the open (black) market by the container load, shipped directly to them or they use some of their fleet of planes or boats to bring them in. These are smugglers, remember, and *also* businessmen, they are going to pay wholesale rates direct from the manufacturer/jobber or they are stolen from the Mexican military (and the Mex military is more just an arm of the smugglers than not, same as their upper level so called "police" establishment). Do you have ANY idea -example-what a legal registered select fire AK is going for now in the US, and the hoops you have to jump through to buy and sell them? The smugglers are NOT going to be doing that and paying 3 grand for a 100 buck wholesale rifle.
There is no "gun show loophole" or legit gun dealers in the US who are selling fully automatic rifles and RPGs etc in mass quantities to be smuggled to Mexico. That is just so ludicrous as to be mega laughable. It's a stupid talking point outright lie the gun grabbers came up with. There's a few go south, that's inevitable given the nature of the business and the US insane prohibition war on some drugs, but I'd be surprised if it approached 1%, and most of those would be just fancy expensive pistols so that the various drug cartel soldiers can have little macho weapons to carry. The serious stuff is wholesale blackmarket sourced from asia and eastern europe for the most part.
The suspense is killing me! WHO Investigates Claims That Swine Flu Resulted From Human Error??
"Where the train goes off the rails is where a conspiracy theory requires that massive numbers of people are keeping their mouths shut about some grand plan that they're a small part of. That can be done for a short time, but eventually every secret that has more than about 3 people in on it comes out."
Thank you. I've always been amazed by theories that posit that a cabal of people are so sophisticated that they are completely fooling everybody in the world - EXCEPT those with such clarity of vision and acute mental powers so as to see and understand the conspiracy completely.
"Everyone is stupid but the conspirators and me. And I'm smarter than both."
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
D-day was kept quiet, as was the Manhattan project. The bluebird was a secret and how many thousands of men were involved in the design and production of that? The 9/11 Hijackers managed to keep their plans to themselves.
In fact your pretty much saying that state secrets, NDAs, sworn oaths and trade secrets don't exist. Yet reality shows that they clearly do.
What's the exact recipe for Coke a Cola? By your logic it would be out in the open by now. There's thousands of people who would have knowledge of it.
In any case what makes you think that something like this needs large numbers of people? One person could just as easily pull it off, even if only a crackpot scientist ala the anthrax scares.
There's plenty of things that happen because of incompetence or just sheer bad luck. But there's plenty of things that happen that were indeed planned (if only guided) by men.
Saying that there's never a conspiracy is naive and ridiculous especially when it's based on some trite self-styled conventional wisdom that people can't keep secrets when with the correct motivation they clearly can.
Even if this were true, does that mean we should stop doing research on virus and vaccine ? Of course not !
Maybe confinment of labs should be improved if this were proven to be true. However, I prefer to live in the XXI century where smallpox has been eradicated thanks to Pasteur rather than banning all this research and having a life expectancy of 40 years.
PS: I am a biologist and have worked in confined labs.
It seems unlikely that this one was made in a lab, by accident or otherwise. Pigs, which swap Influenza both with humans and passing birds, are a natural place for this sort of mixing to occur. But given that it could have happened by a double accident in a sloppy lab (first getting two strains into the same egg, then getting a worker exposed to the result before it's harvested and killed to make vaccine material) it's worth checking.
But announcing it this way just broke security-by-obscurity on a way to make a pandemic on-the-cheap. Fertile eggs, samples of live viruses you want to hybridize, and a minimum of additional equipment and it's something virtually anybody with a spare room and a bit of time and effort could do. As a side-effect it gives them the material to make a vaccine for their own people in the process, long before the virus needs to be tried out on test subjects to test for virulence.
So while this one is no doubt an accident - most likely in the wild, MAYBE in a vaccine lab - don't be surprised if a later one is not. The press coverage of this speculation just showed the world how to replicate the first chapters of "The Stand" on a minimal budget.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Lab Sr.: Who is on first?
Lab Jr.: No, but I know WHO is investigating us for the swine flu.
Lab Sr.: I must know, tell me who is investigating us?
Lab Jr.: I am telling you, WHO is investigating us.
Lab Sr.: Don't question me, who is investigating us?!
Lab Jr.: WHO is! WHO is investigating us!
Lab Sr.: That's what I am trying to find out, why won't you tell me WHO is investigating us.
Lab Jr.: Nevermind, who is on first?
//Nothing to see here, please move along.
CNN and all the other 24 hour "news channels". It's just the latest batch of "you had better watch us if you want us to tell you how to avoid dying" sensationalism.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Donald Rumsfeld does have some connection with the company that produces Tamiflu.
I drank what? -- Socrates
... Then again the collective "wisdom" of Slashdot was 110% certain that the Ipod was going to be a complete flop so I guess that should say something of the level of understanding about reality here.
The average /. user has a deep and comprehensive understanding of the world... of Warcraft. ;)
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
What happens if you violate that secrecy: The Germans or the Japanese win; You spend the rest of your life as a traitor in exile, or receive a long all-expenses paid visit at Fort Leavenworth, or the death penalty.
What happens if you violate that secrecy: The 9/11 Hijackers' plan fails, and they do not become martyrs. They go to jail or are handed back to some country for whom waterboarding looks like a day at the park.
The problem with this is twofold:
First, if it's one scientist operating alone, they would need a lot of knowledge and skill to release this virus, for very little payoff. He doesn't own Tamiflu, he makes a salary for the company that controls it. If they make an extra hundred million dollars this year, he might get a moderate increase in his bonus, but he sure as hell isn't going to rake in a hundred million dollars. It's possible that someone could just be sheer-crazy enough to want to do it out of malice, but it's unlikely you'll find the combination of "talented & well trained" coexisting with "batshit-crazy sociopath". Not impossible, but we're certainly talking fractions of a single percent of the population.
Second, if it's a cabal, then the scientist(s) in question would have to all be ethically & morally bankrupt (not impossible, but not entirely likely), as well as immune to whatever virus they're releasing into the wild (again not impossible, but not entirely likely). They would also, very likely, not see much in the way of money as a result of doing this. So where's the upside? Where's the motivation?
Your example of NDAs, Sworn Oaths, state secrets, and the like are not in the same league as "treason charges with the death penalty as punishment," and where financial motivation is involved, the people with the skills & knowledge to perform this sort of malicious act are very unlikely to profit greatly from doing it.
Yes, it's happened in the past, drug companies have done bad things in the interests of profits. But given the number of drugs on the market, and the relatively few "conspiracy" cases, it seems perfectly reasonable to be skeptical of extraordinary claims when there's a reasonable excuse that doesn't involve a group of twisted, morally bankrupt people deciding to go on a killing spree for the fun of it.
Where the train goes off the rails is where a conspiracy theory requires that massive numbers of people are keeping their mouths shut about some grand plan that they're a small part of.
Although you're right when it comes to 99% of conspiracy theories, in this case _your_ train goes off the rails assuming you need 'massive numbers of people' to pull off engineering a new influenza virus and setting it free. All it takes is a few execs who know a few scientists they can blindly trust, and if everyone involved knows that all the others share the same evil ethics, it isn't unlikely at all a scheme could be devised to create a virus like this without anyone else knowing about it. I'd say you'd need no more than 10 people, probably less.
Try googling seroquel if you think the pharmacy industry doesn't do evil things and tries to cover them up afterwards. It's an anti-deprissant that showed serious health risks and side-effects in preliminary lab studies. These studies somehow dissappeared, the side-effects where never mentioned on any package leaflet, and the drug was approved in multiple countries. Many people who used this drug developed diabetes or ended up seriously overweight, exactly the side-effects described in the lab studies, until these studies somehow surfaced, years later. You explain me how it would be more difficult to cover up creating a new strain of influence, than to have lab studies dissappear in order to get your drug approved.
At least two American Generals were fired for using their knowledge of D-Day as after-dinner conversation at some cocktail parties.
And the Soviets had spies in the Manhattan Project.
Not really good examples.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Men often do evil things for money...Rapid anti-conspiracy nuts are as bad as rabid pro-conspiracy nuts. Both are absolutely delusional about the equally beautiful and grotesque mess that is called humanity.
Conspiracy theories are highly unlikely because they require many people to "conspire", to participate with equal zeal and secrecy to accomplish their plan. Before buying into any conspiracy theory ask yourself: How many people are required to pull this off? What is the likelihood that, in the recruitment process, no "non-believers" would have been solicited to join?
Particularly with the second question, each non-believing, normal Joe unsuccessfully solicited greatly increases the risk that the entire conspiracy will be exposed. This above all else causes me to roll my eyes at conspiracies in general and the 9/11 conspiracy in particular. A 9/11 conspiracy would have required a cast of 100s to pull off and recruiting those 100s would also have included unsuccessfully recruiting 1000s.
Tell you what. You think 9/11 was a government conspiracy? Generate a Gantt chart showing me all of the roles involved in it, the skills required of each role, what they did, and when they did it. Be sure to show the critical path and how information was communicated from person to person. If you can't do that you're wasting everyone's time selling people on this conspiracy or that conspiracy.
Ya, and many guns smuggled down to central america by rogue CIA and other (para)military jerks during their decades long support for tin pit dictators and wannabes, like the Contras, are still down there. Plane loads and plane loads of them. The are some of the same jerks who are part of the drug smuggling cartels themselves, when they aren't running renditioned victims to torture centers or doing other stuff like smuggling opium out of afghanistan.. So in that sense, ya, some the guns originally came from the US.
I will repeat, the BULK of the firearms, especially the select fire rifles and the larger weapons, are sourced down there to begin with because they have been in the area for awhile, or are imported from overseas directly. Some come from the US lately, but nothing like what is down there already and what is being imported from asia and eastern europe directly. They are finding weapons with no serial numbers. Not ground off numbers, these are production runs, directly manufactured without the numbers to begin with for just such sales. And a lot of the other ones can be traced from official US military sales to nations down there including Mexico, then they "disappear", they don't want to talk about those, because they have no defense for the abysmal state of inter nation gun sales to regimes like the completely corrupt Mexican Army and the various police forces down there. No telling how many death squad people got trained at the school of the americas where they were pushed off as righteous and responsible "military officers" from tyrannies down there, and they then got the weapons to do that stuff. Been going on for *generations* now. Places like that are where the bulk of the weapons come from, not private US sales. Big orders, overseas where they are made, or to tyrannical regimes down there in the past. That crap that proven liars like Pelosi are repeating that 90% come from the US and from legit gun dealers and "gun show loopholes" and so on are just more big fat lies. Some do, of course, but most? Not even close.
If it-it being any official announcement about anything important- comes from a government spokestard or bureaucratic lackey, put your heavy duty skeptic hat on, because the odds are heavy you are being lied to. I mean really, how many thousands of lies, big and small, does it take to sink in that they lie more often than not? What's it gonna take? How much longer are intelligent people going to keep believing those crooks and murderers? If they have an agenda to push, something that is controversial and important to them for pushing their globalist new world order crap, they lie to push it, that is their proven and overwhelming default behavior.
Put it this way, if you believe their crap about this, you probably got sucked into the Iraqi WMD BS as well. They lied about that, they lied about the Tonkin gulf attacks, both those lies lead to big huge wars, you think they WOULDN'T lie about something lesser than that, to get their civilian disarmament agendas pushed through?
get over you're "logical fallacy". it's not about that. What he means is that once you have an insight about the nature of the industry, it becomes allot easier to believe that this was engineered. No, it doesn't prove it, but what people on the other side are doing is saying "gee, man made? that's so UN-believable that it can't be true." There's a logical fallacy to consider.
The difference between the two sides is that one side has experienced or read allot about the evils of the industry and the other hasn't. Consider the perspectives of each when they hear about the swine flu being man made.
I think the GP expressed this more elegantly, but I just had to spell it out.
Yep it was so secret it was painted blue so that it would blend in with the sky.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.