Searching for Lethal Influenza Strains 60
1gor writes "Scientists want to exhume the body of the victim of the world's most lethal influenza pandemic between 1918 and 1919 to examine the structure of the virus, reports Bloomberg.com. In an airtight coffin they expect to find well-preserved virus known for its unique ability to kill healthy young people. The strain's attack and mortality rates were highest among people aged between 20 years and 50 years. Are you scared already?"
you know. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:you know. (Score:2)
(Should Pun Moderations be +1 or -1?)
Re:Why would I be scared? (Score:3, Insightful)
little known (Score:3, Informative)
searching the following documents for "viral antibiotic" or simply "antibiotic" should give you the relevant information:
http://www.happybody.com/happybodycom/articlecold
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/onelife/health/sex/st
http://www.explorers.org/newsfiles/archivefiles/s
Intrestingly enough, this last link is even related to the 1918 flu epidemic. It is about a project to exhume people who died of the spanish flu to study the virus, so apparently this is not the first time it has happened.
Re:little known (Score:2)
Some antibiotics might also be active against some viruses, and some antivirals might be active against some bacteria... but I doubt any would be used for both.
Well, then of course you've got a class of substances that definitely kill both. Bleach, for example.
(Same with fungi -- there are antifungal agents designed just for fungi. We don't call those fungal antibiotics.)
- Peter
Re:Why would I be scared? (Score:5, Informative)
'A' not 'The' (Score:3, Informative)
Re:'A' not 'The' (Score:4, Funny)
'A' world war, not 'the' world war.
Re:'A' not 'The' (Score:1)
Re:'A' not 'The' (Score:2)
You would get points there had you truncated...
You ended your statement, however, with a period, thus concluding your idea.
Ooooh... denied...
Re:'A' not 'The' (Score:1)
Re:'A' not 'The' (Score:2)
Re:'A' not 'The' (Score:2)
And, biological weapons based on the influenca virus may well start a new 'cold'-war.
Re:'A' not 'The' (Score:2)
Yeah, and the Civil War was not civil. And the Hundred Years War didn't last 100 years. I could go on.
Lighten up, it was a grammar joke, not a history joke.
Geeks don't need to worry (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Geeks don't need to worry (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Geeks don't need to worry (Score:3, Funny)
Re: Greeks don't need to worry ?? (Score:1)
Re:Geeks don't need to worry (Score:2)
This is actually worse than living outside. You're not exposing your body to enough bugs. You're immune system needs to get a workout to keep you healthy.
Listen to George Carlin's rant on germs. He claims he stayed healthy because he grew up swimming in raw sewage* (the Hudson River, circa 1940's), "you know... to COOL off!"
Get his CD, "You are all diseased." Track 3. George Carlin "was tempered in raw shit!" That's how he avoided get polio. It's really funny.
BTW, he doesn't wash his hands after going to the bathroom, "unless he shits on them."
* Another GC'ism: "Why do they call it raw sewage? Do some people cook the stuff?"
Re:Geeks don't need to worry (Score:2)
Do you really want to know?
Search terms for google: sewage animal feed
Also: sewage food
influenza doesn't scare me...yet (Score:3, Interesting)
"looky here let's open up this box where a deadly virus might be trapped floating about and study it"! We'll just hope it doesn't get out.
Reminds me of,
"I'm not real sure if this atmoic detonation will rip the atmosphere off the earth in a chain reaction, well here goes....*boom*".
When you say it like that it almost sounds like a farside cartoon, but it's pretty close to what happened.
I think if anything scared me, it is the fact that scientists will do anything to figure things out regardless of how potentially dangerous it is.
The mentality of, "if it can be calculated then it should be" really pisses me off.
Re:influenza doesn't scare me...yet (Score:2)
Re:influenza doesn't scare me...yet (Score:1)
Re:influenza doesn't scare me...yet (Score:2)
The problem with an extremely deadly, extremely virulent disease with high mortality and quick victim demise is that it tends to burn itself out. It uses up all it's best victims and leaves behind a population resistant to it's effects. Even generations later, the disease would find a much harder time gaining a foothold.
Lethality (Score:3, Informative)
Reminds me of this readable account [theatlantic.com] of Australian research into more effective mousepox strains.
Imagine an air-borne influenza with the same kind of engineered ability to agitate and misdirect the human immune system response. It would make the 1918 influenza look tame by comparison.
why? (Score:1)
also, a simple cost-benefit analysis should point out that the risk of killing another 20M people isn't worth whatever we get from this.
Re:why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps they're trying to figure out how it killed 20 million healthy young people, so they can prevent it from ever happening again?
Re:why? (Score:2)
Re:why? (Score:1)
As much as it would suck eggs to die a horrible death at the hands of someone's biological weapons, biological weapons are here to stay.
Actually, I really hate to imagine what a World War III might be like.
BTW, if bio-warfare fascinates you, you would probably enjoy the game "Deus Ex."
Re:why? (Score:1)
And WWIII will definitely suck eggs (or mustard, or chlorine, or worse, or
Thought this had been done already? (Score:3, Informative)
This [stanford.edu] is the fearful graph you're looking for.
Re:Thought this had been done already? (Score:1)
Fuck the graph. (Score:2)
Week 1: it's in only places that have international contact (NYC mainly).
Week 2: all major cities and surrounding regions have it.
Week 3: all minor cities have it (since people have travelled to/from major centres).
Week 4: everywhere has it!
Exponential growth reminiscent of the super flu from Stephen King's The Stand! I'm sure Washington State wouldn't be a week 3 infection this time around, either. Heck, with travel being more popular here, I doubt it'd take 2 weeks for the polination of pretty much everyone with a killer virus that is airborne to take its toll.
Of course, you have to wonder how long it would last. Would it be safe for people to destroy all the bodies in an incinerator? What about all the technology that we have now that'd fail in catastrophic ways with no one to monitor it? This is some seriously scary stuff.
Re:Thought this had been done already? (Score:2, Informative)
A recombinant strain has also been created (under level 3 biosafety conditions) bearing the 1918 HA, NA, or M segments, and interestingly these strains were blocked in mice by currently available antiviral agents (reference =Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2002 Oct 15;99(21):13849-54).
Be afraid... (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly the reason we study things like this is because we fear them.
We want to prevent another outbreak. We want to study why it was so lethal, so we can cure it and similar epidemics.
We also fear that someone else will resurrect this bug and spread it around.
But those who fear that the U.S. is studying it in order to make biological weapons will also figure out that a biological weapon like this will not be useful without the ability to innocculate your own population against it.
When large democracies study diseases, even with the worst motives, it scares me less than if we found that suicidal cults or fanatics were studying them. Even if the government is studying it for all the wrong reasons, we end up better able to defend against it.
There will be more pandemics. They may be man-made, but more likely they will be natural.
And the only way we will be prepared for them is to study them.
Re:Be afraid... (Score:2)
we want to study them to make our BioWeapons EVEN BETTER...
-Hack
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:1)
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:2)
Re:incredibly arrogant (Score:1)
oh great... (Score:1)
Bring on the walkin' dude...
Re:oh great... (Score:2)
that would leave about 1.5 million people in the US (assuming our population is 280 mil). seemed like there were fewer in the book/movie, but that is a technicality.
Re:oh great... (Score:1)
Glen Bateman's character mentions at some point that the people will slowly start pooling together and at some point society will rebuild itself. The first comers, the ones we see in the movie, number only in the thousands or so until after vegas is "removed." when stu returns, the entire elected committee is replaced with new people. he and fran leave to live in maine shortly after because they just dont want to be involved in a large society.
regardless, here's to hoping something like that never happens for real.
Obligatory Simpsons Quote (Score:2)
Homer: Eh, not the end of the world.
Marge: No, it's the Apocalypse! Bart, are you wearing clean underwear?
Bart: Not any more.
Seriously though, if you want an article that will make you soil yourself silly, read the Demon in the Freezer [cryptome.org]. It's a long read, but definitely worthwhile. And scary as hell...
Original sighting? (Score:1)
Are you scared? (Score:3, Funny)
Actually no, I'm 51.
The Spanish Lady (Score:3, Informative)
When the 1918 flu first broke out, it occurred during what was quite possibily the worst possible conditions for a it to occur. WWI was on, so large numbers of young people were being shipped all over the globe. At the same time, in many counteries the press was hobbled by wartime censorship, thus delaying the medical community's recognition of the pandemic's existence. The nickname of that the Flu was given, "The Spanish Lady" actually came about from Spain's status as a neutral nation during this time -- the press was able to speak freely, and so its existance was revealed there first.
The 1918 flu virus had a couple of interesting features. As the Bloomberg article mentions, it has an unusual ability to kill young adults. Basically, your typical influenza virus (and many diseases in general) have a U-shaped mortality curve -- highest among children and the elderly. However, this particular outbreak had a W-shaped curve, with a sudden spike right in the middle.
The reason for this mortality spike has long been a matter for conjecture. One feature of this particular flu outbreak was that it often killed suddenly, sometimes without warning, with victims also frequently showing presence of hemorrhage and edema in the lungs. This was so unusual that some have wondered if it was influenza at all -- after all, back then a virus was a mysterious "filterable agent", invisible to the most powerful optical microscopes. However, we do know from more modern research that a particularly large proportions of people who lived through that period have antibodies against a particular influenza type.
A theory is that the high lethality was not due just to the virus itself, but to an immune over-reaction (which would be strongest in young adults) which damaged the lungs. Other theories have suggested that perhaps the influenza outbreak was actually a co-epidemic, with some other agent also present -- another virus, a bacterium, even lungworms have been proposed. While it is likely that weakened victims often picked up secondary infections, evidence for an actual binary epidemic is weak.
Could the epidemic occur again if the strain were resurrected, or perhaps spontaneously put back together by the mutational drifts and re-arrangements that Influenza constantly is undergoing? Indeed, one of the questions is why hasn't it survived into the present? Some have suggested that perhaps the impact was large enough that humanity has been selected for greater resistance. Or perhaps features of the disease have since been incorporated into the various strains which still smolder today, producing a herd resistance which would be enough to prevent a major pandemic. Or maybe we've just been lucky, and it went extinct all by itself.
Either way, I think that even if it suddenly popped up, with all it's virulence intact, we're in much better shape today. We have a network that tracks the ebb and flow of flu epidemics every year, we have a spread of well-characterized vaccines (plus a new nasal spray vaccine coming soon), plus four different FDA-approved anti-virals for influenza. Even if it turned out to be something radically different -- and the historical antibody profiles previously mentioned suggest it's not.