Ravenwood - 10/06/05 06:45 AM
Scientists have made from scratch the Spanish flu virus that killed as many as 50 million people in 1918, the first time an infectious agent behind a historic pandemic has ever been reconstructed.Yesterday, this was the leading sentence of the Washington Post article. It has since been toned down quite a bit, but still contains this lovely passage buried in the middle of the story:
After 10 years of work, Taubenberger and his team reported they had successfully reconstructed the Spanish flu virus, responsible for the deadliest epidemic since the Black Death of the Middle Ages. "Reborn" in mid-August at a high-security laboratory at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the pathogen has already been shown in animal experiments to be just as lethal as it was out in the world 87 years ago.The first draft of the article explicitly stated that the synthesized flu strain posed no danger to humans because immunities that people developed to the 1918 flu would still be hanging around in humans today; passed down from the generations. The current version of the story lacks any such disclaimer.
If there is no threat to humans, then why the need to work so hard to recreate it? (Not that I believe their reassurances to begin with.) I thought they worked with deadly organisms inorder to produce cures and defenses.
And why do we hear about these things after the fact? It's hard to believe there wasn't a discussion among scientists as to the ethics of doing this. But then again, asking for ethics among scientists is such a 'chilling' affront to academic freedom and the pursuit of progress.
If you were around in 1918 you're immune.
I myself would encourage scientists to run with scissors instead, but they feel it makes them seem less important.
Posted by: Ron Hardin at October 6, 2005 7:36 AMFor a great read on more uplifting deadly virus stuff, I highly recommend "The Demon in the Freezer", by Richard Preston (who also wrote, "The Hot Zone", which is primarily about a little-known US outbreak the soft, cuddly Ebola virus).
Anyhow, the Demon in the Freezer is about smallpox, missing stockpiles, scientific manipulation of it, and the inconvenient fact that human immunity to Smallpox fades away after just a few years.
Both books are non-fiction, which makes them particularly frightening. Having read both of them, I realize now just how serious a threat biological warfare really is.
Posted by: roger at October 6, 2005 10:33 AMYou know, immunity in your genes does not last forever. I bet that 87 years passing may damage the effectiveness of the immunity to the flue strain. Plus, they don't have the strain itself on file so they could have made enough changes to make immunity ineffective.
This article scared the shit out of me when refered to the article I saw in yesterdays local paper. Pres Bush wants more power to the federal government to use US troops to control outbreaks of diseases. They want to isolate any and all people who show signs of the asian flue and legalities be damned. (If I was a conspiracy wacko and seeing both these two articles in the news I'd really be getting the guns ready.)
Well Rhett, W himself asked "How do you quarantine a city"? I have no idea myself.
They recreated the 1918 flu to build a vaccine for this year's bird flu. I read somewhere that both strains are very much alike.
We have had a predictable, engineered media panic over flu vaccine the past several years, yet fatalities have been so low that by spring it isn't even a side story. This year may be different, then again maybe not. But I might just get a flu shot this year for the first time ever.
Thats all they need to recreate the SPANISH FLU just think if terrorists ever got it
Posted by: screaming eagle at October 10, 2005 10:28 PM(c) Ravenwood and Associates, 1990 - 2014
