Why Bird Flu Research Is Dangerous

Image: The H5N1 virus could mutate to a deadlier form and spread to humans

Bird Flu 'Could Mutate To Cause Deadly Human Pandemic' -- BBC

The H5N1 bird flu virus could change into a form able to spread rapidly between humans, scientists have warned.

Researchers have identified five genetic changes that could allow the virus to start a deadly pandemic.

Writing in the journal Science, they say it would be theoretically possible for these changes to occur in nature.

A US agency has tried unsuccessfully to ban publication of parts of the research fearing it could be used by terrorists to create a bioweapon.

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My Comment: This info should make any potential bio-terrorist happy .... they now have the blue print to cause a pandemic.

Fears Of The Next HIV

Image from AIDS response

African Monkey Meat That Could Be Behind The Next HIV -- The Independent

Deep in Cameroon's rainforests, poachers are killing primates for food. Evan Williams reports from Yokadouma on a practice that could create a pandemic

Deep in the rainforest of south-east Cameroon, the voices of the men rang through the trees. "Where are the white people?" they shouted. The men, who begin to surround us, are poachers, who make their money from the illegal slaughter of gorillas and chimpanzees. They disperse but make it known that they are not keen for their activities to be reported; the trade they ply could not only wipe out critically endangered species but, scientists are now warning, could also create the next pandemic of a deadly virus in humans.

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My Comment: It's seems that we are destined to experience the next pandemic.

Deadly Animal Diseases Poised To Infect Humans

Health workers culling poultry at Shoilpur village near the Indian city of Kolkata. The H5N1 bird flu pandemic spread across the world in 2003 causing widespread panic and has so far killed 260 people. Reuters

From The Independent:

Environmental disruption set to trigger new pandemics, scientists warn.

The world is facing a growing threat from new diseases that are jumping the human-animal species barrier as a result of environmental disruption, global warming and the progressive urbanisation of the planet, scientists have warned.

At least 45 diseases that have passed from animals to humans have been reported to UN agencies in the last two decades, with the number expected to escalate in the coming years.

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Brazil Finds New Strain Of H1N1 Virus

From Breitbart/AFP:

Brazilian scientists have identified a new strain of the H1N1 virus after examining samples from a patient in Sao Paulo, their institute said Tuesday.

The variant has been called A/Sao Paulo/1454/H1N1 by the Adolfo Lutz Bacteriological Institute, which compared it with samples of the A(H1N1) swine flu from California.

The genetic sequence of the new sub-type of the H1N1 virus was isolated by a virology team lead by one of its researchers, Terezinha Maria de Paiva, the institute said in a statement.

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WHO: Swine Flu Pandemic Has Begun, 1st In 41 Years

Swine flu has spread in Australia since a ship with infected passengers there has docked.
(HO/Reuters)

From AP:

GENEVA (AP) — The World Health Organization has told its member nations it is declaring a swine flu pandemic — the first global flu epidemic in 41 years.

The move came Thursday as infections climbed in the United States, Europe, Australia, South America and elsewhere.

In a statement sent to member countries, WHO says it decided to raise the pandemic alert level from phase 5 to 6, meaning that a global outbreak of swine flu has begun. The decision was made after the U.N. health agency held an emergency meeting on swine flu with its experts.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

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More News On WHO Declaring A Pandemic

WHO 'declares swine flu pandemic' -- BBC
WHO declares swine flu pandemic -- AFP
WHO tells some members world is in swine flu pandemic -- CBC
The Pandemic is Now -- NPR
Swine Flu Now Declared A Global Pandemic -- SKY News
WHO declares global swine flu pandemic -- Times Online

Is This A Pandemic? Define ‘Pandemic’

TERMINOLOGY It is not often clear when the spread of a disease, such as cholera, for which a boy was being treated in Congo, becomes a pandemic. Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

From The New York Times:

After decades of warnings about the inevitability of another pandemic of influenza, it is astonishing that health officials have failed to make clear to the public, even to many colleagues, what they mean by the word pandemic.

Generations of people have used the term to describe widespread epidemics of influenza, cholera and other diseases. But as the new H1N1 swine influenza virus spreads from continent to continent, it is clear that a useful definition is far more complicated and elusive than officials had thought.

And what is at stake is far more than an exercise in semantics. A clear understanding of the term is central to the World Health Organization’s six-level staging system for declaring a pandemic, which in turn informs countries when to set their control efforts in motion.

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WHO Official Says World Edging Towards Pandemic

A picture shoes an airport thermal camera system monitoring the body heat of passengers arriving from abroad is displayed at Sofia airport in this April 29, 2009 file photo. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov/Files

From Reuters:

GENEVA (Reuters) - The spread of H1N1 flu in Australia, Britain, Chile, Japan and Spain has nudged the world closer to a pandemic, the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday.

The newly-discovered strain had caused more infections than seasonal influenza at the start of Chile's flu season, raising concern about how it would spread in the southern hemisphere, according to Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's acting assistant director-general.

The virus has mainly affected people aged below 60 and caused 117 deaths worldwide, including some otherwise healthy people, he said. For now, the WHO's pandemic scale remained at the second-highest level but the threshold may soon be crossed.

"Globally we believe that we are at Phase 5 but we are getting closer to Phase 6," Fukuda told journalists. "The future impact of this infection has yet to unfold."

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Innards of H1N1 Virus Resemble 'Flu Sausage'

From Live Science:

On March 28, one month before news of the swine flu outbreak headlined worldwide, a nine-year-old girl in Imperial County, California, ran a fever of 104.3°F. She had not rolled up her sleeve for this year’s flu vaccine, but that day she opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue for a cotton swab that scooped up mucous samples from her throat. Her mucus arrived at the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego where technicians tested it and classified the virus in it as “unsubtypable” influenza A – it was something new.

She recovered.

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New Way Of Treating The Flu

Dr. Robert Linhardt's new compound (green spheres) blocks both the N (pink spikes) and H (blue spikes) portion of the flu virus. The compound prevents the infection of the cell and the spread of the flu to other cell like no other compound before. (Credit: Melissa Kemp/Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 20, 2009) — What happens if the next big influenza mutation proves resistant to the available anti-viral drugs? This question is presenting itself right now to scientists and health officials this week at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, as they continue to do battle with H1N1, the so-called swine flu, and prepare for the next iteration of the ever-changing flu virus.

Promising new research announced by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute could provide an entirely new tool to combat the flu. The discovery is a one-two punch against the illness that targets the illness on two fronts, going one critical step further than any currently available flu drug.

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Swine Flu Data 'Very Consistent' With Early Stages Of A Pandemic

Swine flu data so far is very consistent with what researchers would expect to find in the early stages of a pandemic. (Credit: iStockphoto/Henrik Jonsson)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (May 12, 2009) — Early findings about the emerging pandemic of a new strain of influenza A (H1N1) in Mexico are published in the journal Science.

Researchers from the MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling at Imperial College London, working in collaboration with the World Health Organisation and public health agencies in Mexico, have assessed the epidemic using data to the end of April. Their key findings are as follows:

* The data so far is very consistent with what researchers would expect to find in the early stages of a pandemic.

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Pandemics That Were And Weren’t

1956/1958- The Asian Flu: Far less deadly than the Spanish flu, the Asian flu of 1956-1958 killed about 70,000 Americans. The strain mutated from an earlier H2N2 flu that had originated in Russia and gone pandemic in 1889. With its relatively low death rate and long duration, the Asian Flu perfectly exemplifies how most pandemics don’t threaten the collapse of civilizations, but merely exacerbate the problems already caused by seasonal flu. A girl gargling broth in Sagamihara Hospital, Japan, during the 1957 flu outbreak, courtesy of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, via Flickr.com

From Popsci.com:

After a week of swine flu hysteria, PopSci.com takes a look back at the history of pandemic flu.

More often than not, it’s the newer diseases, like HIV or Ebola, that grab all the headlines. But those Johnny-come-lately microbes have nothing on one of the most dangerous, and most ancient, viruses that afflicts mankind: influenza.

Medicine has grappled with the deadly influenza virus since the time of Hypocrites, and some historians have identified flu epidemics as far back as ancient Rome. In a regular year, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 36,000 Americans die from the seasonal flu, while the virus costs the nation between $71 and $160 billion. That’s ten times the death toll of 9/11 and double the cost of Hurricane Katrina, but it's far less noticeable, as the virus mainly kills the very old and very young, and the cost is spread out over the entire year in question.

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5 Ways To Protect Yourself (And Others) From Swine Flu

Photo: GOOD OLD SOAP AND WATER: Experts say frequent hand washing is one of the best ways to defend against swine flu. ISTOCKPHOTO/ALANDJ

From Scientific American:

Swine flu has yet to escalate into a global pandemic, but here's what to do if it does.

Experts say that the steps you should take to shield yourself from swine flu are not much different than those you might take to ward off seasonal flu.

1. Don't touch your face
Above all, keep your hands away from your eyes, mouth and nose, all of which serve as pathways for the virus to enter your respiratory tract, says Allison Aiello, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan School of Public Health in Ann Arbor.

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'Worst-Case' Scenario For Flu Estimated

This map shows the projected number of H1N1 "swine flu" cases in the United States at the county level, 28 days from now. Credit: Christian Thiemann, Rafael Brune, and Alejandro Morales Gallardo/Northwestern University

For Live Science:

There will be about 1,700 U.S. cases of the new H1N1 flu, aka "swine flu," in the next four weeks under a worst-case scenario, according to a research team's new simulations.

And a second team working independently, about 200 miles away, on exactly the same question came up with a similar forecast.

As of Thursday, there were 109 lab-confirmed U.S. cases of the new influenza, according to the World Health Organization, which earlier this week raised the risk level of the influenza to one stage below pandemic because the virus is being transmitted within at least two countries in one region of the world. A full pandemic — the virus is also being transmitted within a third country in a different region — is considered imminent.

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Lessons Found In History Of Flu Pandemics

An emergency hospital during 1918 influenza epidemic, in Camp Funston, Kansas. Credit: National Museum of Health and Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology

From Live Science:

To understand the sometimes bold, sometimes nervous governmental reactions to the rapidly growing swine flu crisis, one need only look at the incredibly unpredictable history of horrifically deadly flu pandemics and the frightening outbreaks that did not become pandemics.

Pandemics, plagues and pestilence have beset humans throughout history. But the strategy and response to swine flu unfolding in recent days is rooted in what has been learned from modern flu outbreaks and pandemics going back to the colossal 1918 event.

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10 Deadly Diseases That Hopped Across Species

From Live Science:

Bacteria and viruses that are deadly to one type of creature can evolve quickly to infect another. While the swine flu outbreak is the latest example, a host of infectious and deadly diseases have hopped from animals to humans and from humans to animals.

The cross-species infection can originate on farms or markets, where conditions foster mixing of pathogens, giving them opportunities to swap genes and gear up to kill previously foreign hosts (i.e. you). Or the transfer can occur from such seemingly benign activities as letting a performance monkey on some Indonesian street corner climb on your head. Microbes of two varieties can even gather in your gut, do some viral dancing, and evolve to morph you into a deadly, contagious host.

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5 Essential Swine Flu Survival Tips

No kidding! This CDC photograph captured a sneeze in progress, revealing the plume of salivary droplets as they are expelled in a large cone-shaped array from this man's open mouth. The flu virus can spread in this manner and survive long enough on a doorknob or countertop to infect another person. It dramatically illustrating the reason you should cover your mouth when sneezing or coughing to protect others from germ exposure, health officials say. It’s also why you need to wash your hands a lot, on the assumptions others don’t always cover their sneezes. Credit: CDC/James Gathany

From Live Science:

Vice President Joe Biden said today to avoid subways and other confined spaces because of the swine flu sweeping the nation.

And yesterday, the first U.S. swine flu death — a toddler — and the decision by health officials to ratchet up their global alert level to just below a full-on pandemic came as a jolt to the system.

Meanwhile, there are a slew of suggestions out there for what you should do. Often the tips don't include enough detail for you to do it right. For example, you probably don't wash your hands effectively or often enough. And did you know you could be infected and spreading the flu up to a full day before you feel symptoms and up to seven days after you get sick?

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Is Swine Flu Pandemic Imminent?

PRECAUTIONS Dozens of deaths have occurred from the swine influenza outbreak in Mexico. People wore surgical masks on Monday in Mexico City. Gregory Bull/Associated Press

From Live Science:

The swine flu drama is advancing like wildfire, with the Mexican death count rising steadily, U.S. cases doubling, and the World Health Organization moving a step closer late Monday to declaring the incident a full-on pandemic.

Will this flu become a global pandemic in humans, like AIDS or the "Spanish flu" of 1918–1919 which killed an estimated 50 million people in 18 months?

Declaring a pandemic is a big official deal. It's the more global version of an epidemic, which is a disease outbreak in a specific community or region or population. The word "pandemic" has a specific meaning to doctors and researchers, and once officials apply it to an outbreak, even more money and other resources are rushed to victims. Not to mention that there hasn't been a flu pandemic in more than 40 years (the "Hong Kong flu").

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As Swine Flu Spreads, Focus Shifts To A Potential Vaccine

From Discover Magazine:

As the swine flu outbreak continues to spread, with Russia, South Korea, and Australia joining the list of countries with suspected cases and the death toll climbing in Mexico, attention has turned to the potential of a swine flu vaccine that could protect populations from infection. But a new vaccine takes some months to develop. Says Iain Stephenson, an expert on flu vaccines: “We are in a position where if a swine flu virus becomes a pandemic we don’t currently have a vaccine for it…. I think that it is unlikely there will be widespread vaccine in less than six to eight months” [Telegraph]. In the meantime, says Stephenson, patients can be treated with antiviral drugs.

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Swine Flu Vaccine Could Take 6 Months

People, wearing surgical masks as a precaution against infection, stand in line to enter the General Hospital as masked workers monitor the entrance in Mexico City, Friday. Dario Lopez-Mills/Associated Press

From Live Science:

A vaccine for the new swine flu in humans could take at least six months to manufacture and distribute widely, a British doctor said.

The reason: Vaccines must be developed from the specific flu strain, tested for safety, sent to manufacturers for mass production, and then distributed around the world. By the time this is done, the first wave of a pandemic flu might already be over, said Iain Stephenson, a doctor in the Infectious Diseases Unit of the Leicester Royal Infirmary in England.

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Swine Flu News Updates -- April 27, 2009

Alistair Dixon, 24, from Grimsby, is met at Heathrow by his father Stanley Photo: David Dyson

Mexican Swine Flu Spreads To Europe, Markets Edgy -- Reuters

* First European case confirmed in Spain

* Mexican death toll at 103

* Governments step up health checks at airports

* Stock markets fall, dollar and yen rise

MEXICO CITY, April 27 (Reuters) - Governments around the world acted to stem a possible flu pandemic on Monday, as a virus that has killed 103 people in Mexico and spread to North America was confirmed to have reached Europe.

While the virus has so far killed no one outside Mexico, the fact that it has proved able to spread quickly between humans has raised fears that the world may finally be facing the flu pandemic that scientists say is long overdue.

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More News On The Swine Flu Outbreak

U.S. Slow to Learn of Mexico Flu -- Washington Post
Warnings as swine virus spreads -- BBC
Swine flu case confirmed in Spain -- BBC
Europe Urges Citizens to Avoid U.S. and Mexico Travel -- New York Times
Swine flu: Every passenger arriving in Britain from Mexico screened -- The Telegraph
CDC: US begins border monitoring for swine flu -- AP
Top health official warns US may see flu deaths -- AFP
Asia, Pacific Take Measures to Prevent Spread of Swine Flu -- Voice Of America
Countries adopt plans to counter swine flu -- UPI
Swine flu fears prompt quarantine plans, pork bans -- Yahoo news/AP
At epidemic's epicenter, Mexico works to remain calm -- McClatchy newspapers
MICHAEL HANLON: How swine flu could be a bigger threat to humanity than nuclear warfare -- Daily Mail
Swine Flu Could Become More Dangerous -- SKY News
Inside the Home of a Swine Flu Victim -- ABC News
How well prepared is the world for flu? -- BBC
Swine Flu Unlikely To Have Impact on the Economy -- Time Magazine
How to Protect Yourself From Swine Flu -- KTLA
Flu Special Report: The Basics -- Live Science
Has globalisation made us more catastrophe-prone? -- The Independent