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New Virus Jumps From Monkeys To Lab Workers
sciencehabit writes "It started with a single monkey coming down with pneumonia at the California National Primate Research Center in Davis. Within weeks, 19 monkeys were dead and three humans were sick. Now, a new report confirms that the Davis outbreak was the first known case of an adenovirus jumping from monkeys to humans. The upside: the virus may one day be harnessed as a tool for gene therapy."
What after everybody is Dead?
You forgot about AIDS.
One must wonder if this story has been released to create publicity for the reboot Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
The California National Primate Research Center. Hmm, does that sound like it's owned by a private corporation or the US Government? I know, lets make a bunch of retarded, baseless accusations under the assumption that it is without first taking 5 seconds to look it up.
I heard it was the Umbrella division at the CNPRC where this initially happened.
You damned dirty apes!
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The upside: the virus may one day be harnessed as a tool for gene therapy.
Oh, I feel so much better now knowing there is an upside! And here I was worried that a virus totally new and thus unrecognized by the human immune system might wipe out the bulk of the human race. Silly me.
Better known as 318230.
the zombies will be everywhere!
We don't really understand the biology of virus jumping species, do we? Other than the few documented cases of some viruses, that is - i.e., this virus x has done it before.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I bet there will be the usual "I am legend" zombie jokes now. Seriously, while there are dangers in using a virus for gene therapy .. most viruses .. in fact a good 99% of them are handily defeated by the immune system. Also not all viruses spread easily. Furthermore when they are used in gene therapy their genes are removef are severely crippled
But... he does this... FOR SCIENCE!
That's a relief, I was worried it'd be a computer thing.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
The California National Primate Research center is a United States federal government funded biomedical research facility.
The persuit of knowledge is dangerous. Experimentation with practical application even more so.
But you know what happens if we don't take these risks?
Nothing.
From Wikipedia:
The California National Primate Research Center (CNPRC) is a United States federal government funded biomedical research facility, dedicated to improving human and animal health, and located on the University of California, Davis, campus.
Yeah, sounds just like a private lab far away from the scrutiny of the public eye. Hell, the freshmen might even have trouble getting into the lab for late-night makeout/pot smoking sessions! Doubt it, though.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marburg_virus
the comment was not specific to this incident. your view is too narrow.
Read radical news here
comment had a broader horizon than your narrow look. you could have spared 5 seconds to think broader.
Read radical news here
This article, of the flavor of scientists (found|suggest) x ->y, when it was TOO LATE to get a single DNA sample!
Instead of a CarbonTax we need a FauxScienceClaptrapHotAirTax. There is far too much of it.
Worse than that.
If clever well funded scientists under careful observation do this there is a none zero chance of danger. However they will publish their findings and the state of the art will advance.
If you make it illegal to do this kind of research then someone somewhere will tinker with it.* They are much more likely to make mistakes and skip safety protocols.
Nothing significant will be learnt from their findings (because they can't publish) but we will face all the danger of their mistakes.
*They may be elite scientist working for military/uber-pharmaceutical company or they may be a less than fully talented fringe scientist in some less well funded/observed company/country - neither of those options are reassuring.
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
Almost the entire population of Britain is wiped out, save for a few lucky survivors.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289043/
Especially not the sick ones. Sheesh, how hard is that?
I can haz apocolyse
Oh, I assumed that the posting was caused by the spasming bought on by the force with which your jerking knee it your chin.
note to self: steer clear of monkeys.
Here comes the zombie apocolypse
Nothing more than could go wrong with natural evolution over the the same course of time.
See, we have these things called DNA, that occurs naturally, and these things that happen to it called mutations, that occur naturally, and every time we wipe something out or solve a problem, we "force" the organism (indirectly) to move to a mutation that survives. In doing so, nature does the same things as we would do, except more efficiently, more quickly, more randomly and under far less control.
Wait 50 years. AIDS will be back, in a slightly different form. Bird flu will be back. Swine flu will be back (it is already, in various mutated forms that we can't treat). MRSA will be back (because MRSA is basically nothing more than an evolved bacteria).
30 years ago we hadn't even heard of MRSA or AIDS and today they are present most of the world. Guess what'll happen 30 years from now, especially if we eradicate either of those and leave lots more potential human hosts living for longer with freedom to copulate more than previously?
Nothing we do in genetics, or even huge tracts of biology, isn't happening too, now, around you, this second, under far, far less control. And guess what? If we don't tinker with it ourselves, we have no way to detect, understand, treat and cope with any of those natural changes that have a devastating effect on people (i.e. we'd be able to do fuck-all about AIDS, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, even just simple cancer). Cancer is a naturally-occurring mutation that makes a single cell out of billions in your body go ape-shit and not stop reproducing.
Despite all that, statistics show that people have NEVER lived as long as they do now (and cancer survival rates are phenomenal compared to even 10 years ago). All that's because of people tinkering.
Basically, your argument would make more sense reversed - why aren't we tinkering more? Tinkering helps, yet nature destroys and keeps coming back and back and back and attacking us with new things all the time that we take DECADES to understand.
It is when science goes in unexpected directions that progress is made.
So in a way "What could possibly go wrong" is the desired result.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Someone must inform Madagascar!
...rage...
So maybe, in retrospect, accepting a private offer for the monkey on lab tech porn wasn't such a great way to fund the lab after all. Damn budget cuts.
Monstar L
Unlikely. It will be weaponised for more desperate, enormous profits.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
... so the lab worker butt fscked a monkey?
Well said. Nature's unchecked experimentation is far more horrifying and rewarding then anything man can come up with. While we can often come up with marvels and directions nature might not have gone, the scope and timeline of what we have done so far is a joke. It is hubris in the most apt sense of the word to think we can outproduce nature at this point.
Good-bye
Time to queue up Don't Fear the Reaper
Nature works on the exact same principal. THAT is what evolution is.
Good-bye
The summary has the article on it's head. Did the poster or the editors actually read the article??? The virus did not jump from the monkeys to the humans, but the other way around. Sick lab worker was the source of the virus, which jumped on the monkeys. As this was a completely new pathogen for them, they had no immunity and most of the infected animals died. This is typical 'small pox blanket' story.
... welcome our new human killing viral monkey overlords. Better than those DAMN DIRTY APES!
I8-D
The phrase "small pox blanket", while applicable to cases where the disease was spread accidentally via blankets, is better reserved for those cases where disease-carrying blankets were deliberately used as vectors of infection against enemy peoples, such as the seige of Fort Pitt.
-kgj
If any of you out there find this interesting, I suggest you would enjoy
Richard Preston's excellent book "The Hot Zone". In the book
there is a discussion of how Ebola virus escaped the confines of
a biosafety containment level 4 lab in Fort Detrick MD.
It's a damned good read.
Glad it wasn't 12 monkeys...(I'm sure someone else said this already)
Except when the answer to that questions is "zombies."
Why? It's great!
You have cancer?
Use Public Transport and get cured for free!
(You might get the sniffles free on top)
What they meant to say was "28 Days Later".
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
analyzed lung tissue samples from the dead monkeys and identified a never-before-seen adenovirus, which they named titi monkey adenovirus (TMAdV), or "T-virus."
Hasn't Hollywood taught us anything?
Actually, humans can target certain mutations specifically and accomplish things nature might or might not have a mutation path to.
Things like making certain parts fluorescent and such. In nature there is an implied improvement in survival and/or reproduction that preserves a mutation and propagates it onward. Humans can create mutations that provide no such advantages.
But the difference is that as human pursue these various mutations, there can be unintended side effects and consequences. Things like bacteria that excrete alcohol for biofuels that happen to like to live in the soil and feed off plant matter. Their alcohol excretions can kill living foliage. If those bugs manage to get out of their scientific/industrial homes and escape into the wild - and survive - then we have created a path to wipe out vegetation.
I think that kind of scenario is along the lines of what people fear. Sure, nature could also come up with a bug that feeds off plant matter, excretes alcohol, and loves to live in the soil. But humans have already done it and now it is a liability if it ever gets out.
When I said to inject the monkey, I meant with the needle!
Yeah, one percent of Caucasians are immune to HIV. Not 1% of people, just 1% of caucasians. HIV goes airborne, bye bye human race that can't afford drugs, which is 99.9% of them once demand goes to 100%.
Adaptability rarely happens over a short period with slowly reproducing creatures. Virii, reproducing at an unimaginably faster rate can adapt faster. It's a race we can never win.
I8-D
"none zero"? Are you trying to say "non-zero"? "Non" rhymes with "gone" and "none" rhymes with "sun".
That sentence should be:
"If clever, well-funded scientists under careful observation do this, there is a non-zero chance of danger."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jqJuP1drko&t=3m35s
New Virus Jumps From Infected Computers To IT Workers.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
This happened back in 1987 at NAMRL (Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory) where 3 handlers (plus one of the handlers' wives - the first human-human transmission) were infected with B-virus (cercopithecid herpesvirus 1, Herpesvirus simiae), two of which later died. From what I was told (from health care workers that cared for them at the time) it was quite a horrible way to die; herpes lesions covering almost their entire bodies.
http://www.brown.edu/Research/Primate/lpn26-3.html
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
Lets keep tampering with integrated circuits, computer networks, artificial intelligence 'privately', without scrutiny of public eye in private corporation's faraway labs as much as we can.
after all, what can possibly go wrong. Other than Skynet.
That's what you get for fucking monkeys, you dirty monkey fucking fagets
Wow, yeah, gene therapy, that's great. Who is going to need it if we are all dead? Read "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston, and you'll then know why this is terribly bad news.
Words, words, words
From the article:
"After testing the other monkeys at the primate center, which houses hundreds of enclosures, the researchers found one healthy rhesus macaque with TMAdV antibodies. That suggests the disease might have arisen in the macaques and somehow passed to lab workers or the titi monkeys via shared medical equipment or some other contact between the two species, the researchers report today in PLoS Pathogens."
So manaque -> Human -> titi
OR
So manaque -> Human
-> titi
OR
So manaque -> equipment -> Human
-> titi
In ANY case, the macaque appear to have had it first, then humans.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Dr Bob - is that you?!?
Ok John , which monkeys have you been kissing , we need to know NOW!.....
Yeah, sounds just like a private lab far away from the scrutiny of the public eye. Hell, the freshmen might even have trouble getting into the lab for late-night makeout/pot smoking sessions! Doubt it, though.
Davisite here. They would indeed have quite a hard time wandering in. Keeping non-authorized humans out would be enough of a concern purely for the contamination aspect. They study tuberculosis, HIV, and several other diseases out there, and the monkeys aren't cheap. They don't want dirty humans getting their stock sick. The much, much, much bigger security issue is the psycho animal rights movement native to northern California. The primate center is high on their hit list. Security is tight.
If a college student wandered about a mile out of town (it is a small town, so that's not -too- far from campus) away from nearly any signs of civilization, they'd be greeted with a large imposing fence that screams "Go away" and could probably keep a speeding car from charging on through. If they tried to go through the gate, they'd be greeted by at least one armed security guard. They presumably would not be on the approved list, and given the above security concerns, would have a hard time talking their way past. Safe to assume the doors are locked too.
It would not be trivial.
I went on EBay to look for a tool to write DNA code that would fight the virus, and the Singaporeans want too much for such a synthesizer. Keepin the mans down.
http://cgi.ebay.com/BECKMAN-OLIGO-1000M-DNA-SYNTHESIZER-POWER-UP-1000-M-/280475408029?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item414da3169d
which one of them was having sex with the monkeys?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I used to work there about 6 or 7 years ago back when one of my co-workers allegedly tried to steal a monkey although it was determined that the monkey must've escaped by crawling down the drain. If there's one thing a monkey is likely to do it's go up, not run for the middle of the floor and try going down a drain pipe. Everyone assumed that it was a monkey heist that went wrong.
If they started arming the security that was there then, that would be far more dangerous. He's likely to shoot himself in the face while scratching his head with the barrel Planet 9 style.
Doors are locked. Doors to the SIV monkeys are always locked. Keys are constantly being changed as people quit or lose their keys. I'm still close friends with someone who works there. Keys are still changed a lot.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
"!@#!@ Who set all these lab monkeys free?"
Classic line of the Terran Science Vessel in SC1...
...Sales of Resident Evil 5 are up almost 30% after the LAPD bought five (5) copies of the game for "training purposes."
Ha, That little adenovirus is nothing an adjustment can't fix.
It's got out into the general population, has mutated, and we're all going to die. Ooops.
I am disappoint...
Isn't this how HIV started? A virus spreading to humans from apes.
The flu of 2011! Hide the kids and women!