WHO Investigates Claims That Swine Flu Resulted From Human Error 249
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.
First plot! (Score:5, Funny)
My minions! We are discovered!
We must now shift gears from a swine flu pandemic to sharks! With frickin' LASER BEAMS!
Re:First plot! (Score:5, Insightful)
It could be worse: Randall Flagg could be traveling the countryside to gather his minions in Las Vegas.
Re: (Score:2)
It could be worse: Randall Flagg could be traveling the countryside to gather his minions in Las Vegas.
But what if he is? [twitter.com]
what crap (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:what crap (Score:4, Informative)
There is no ... 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...
Actually, many guns sold in the US are turning up involved in crimes in Mexico. [nytimes.com]
stop being naive (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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Tinfoil hat wearing crowd said this was man-made (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
Re:Tinfoil hat wearing crowd said this was man-mad (Score:5, Insightful)
But let's start spreading those conspiracy theories anyway!
All depends on which group (Score:2)
wants to claim they were specifically targeted and which government agency; most likely during Bush's term; started it.
Never underestimate the internet for created a mess, or having Washington to create distractions from their back breaking budgets
Re:Tinfoil hat wearing crowd said this was man-mad (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Tinfoil hat wearing crowd said this was man-mad (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Tinfoil hat wearing crowd said this was man-mad (Score:5, Funny)
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!
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30 years? Hmmm, that's about 0.000000007% of the age of the earth. I'd say you are qualified.
I'm betting the years he's spent on planets other than earth make him qualified.
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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.
Re:Tinfoil hat wearing crowd said this was man-mad (Score:5, Insightful)
Please come hang out with me ;)
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that doesn't mean there won't be retribution for the past.
Do you even know what logical fallacy your post is?
Re:Tinfoil hat wearing crowd said this was man-mad (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
And if you ever had an affair, you know what the parent is talking about.
Ah, never mind, this is slashdot.
but seriously though, a nice scientific heuristic concerning conspiracy theories is that they all violate ocams razor...
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
"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 ac
Re:Tinfoil hat wearing crowd said this was man-mad (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 waterboardin
Re:Tinfoil hat wearing crowd said this was man-mad (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
"When 4 people sit down to discuss conspiracy, 3 are government agents and the 4th is a fool."
-- old Soviet aphorism
I read stuff like "someone created swine flu on purpose" and consider that anyone with a smattering of virology (including myself) are laughing so hard we'll all need to be hospitalized, or perhaps committed... yep, it's a conspiracy to get rid of all the virologists, so they can put their evil plan for viral domination in place!
Re:Tinfoil hat wearing crowd said this was man-mad (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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You know there's two things I've learned in my nearly 30 years on this earth.
Here's one thing I've found to be true on my slightly longer years on this earth.
Reasoning purely using peoples motivations and what's _possible_ without looking for actual evidence to support your conclusions will turn you quickly into a conspiracy nut. Conspiracy theories always seem to have at their base the motivations of the people involved. Any "evidence" is always secondary, and contrary evidence is ignored.
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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.
Not even close sir. Conspiracy theories are such because they have so little evidence to back them up. If there were solid logic or evidence behind the conspiracy theory, it would cease to be a conspiracy theory. The number of conspiracy theories that are proven correct compared to the ones that were proven false are staggeringly small. At least the rabid anti-conspiracy nuts have statistics and logic on their side.
This isn't to say that conspiracies can't be correct or that they shouldn't be investigat
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"$5000 on the line will make some people murder and everyone accepts that."
Not very many, and those people have little to loose. Even in that case I would need to see proof that a person did do something before speculating like an ass.
"Rapid anti-conspiracy nuts "
That makes no damn sense. Unless you mean, "people who don't go off spouting shit they have no evidence of."
"$100,000,000 dollars on the line and a certain type of person thinks that *nobody* would kill for it. "
Not true. The risk is very high to t
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They don't have samples from Transylvania, where the flu may have evolved, either. They have viruses there, right? I'm not sure how that is relevant in any way.
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Yes, but they probably do have samples from that region. They don't have samples from Mars, and it has been posited that life on Earth originated from Mars, thus if you anti-conspiracy nuts deny the Great Martian H1N1 conspiracy you're all fools!
> I'm not sure how that is relevant in any way.
Thank you for being honest!
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But let's start spreading those conspiracy theories anyway!
Yes, let's. Business has been slow lately.
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Re:Tinfoil hat wearing crowd said this was man-mad (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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"...a virus released to raise some money isn't surprising at all."
What proof is there? Sure, it could possible happen, but how about some fucking proof? oh right, some things happened before, therefore you don't need proof.
Idiot.
Re:Tinfoil hat wearing crowd said this was man-mad (Score:4, Insightful)
Origins (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Origins (Score:5, Funny)
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.
You think they'd be so obvious as to release it in a big city such as New York or London? Of course they'd release it in a place where no-one would expect it to be released, like rural Mexico.
Now where's my tin foil hat?
Re:Origins (Score:4, Insightful)
So the virus is found in the poor countryside of Mexico...
And someone thinks it was created somewhere in a lab?
Your comment is stupid because: viruses travel.
It's also stupid because: If you actually wanted to release a virus, you'd do it in someplace that would cover your tracks.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Yes, because it would make far more sense to release it right near the lab, of course ... nobody would *ever* guess *then*. Also, it makes much more sense to release it in a country far better prepared to not only contain any outbreak rapidly, but also far better able to analyse the genetic make-up and origins, in addition to analysing the spread of the disease for further clues on its origins.
Actually, if you think about it for more than five seconds, if you *are* part of such a "conspiracy", it makes perf
no labs in mexico? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's a farming town where most people commute into Mexico City for the work week, though.
* I Googled "largest hog farm in the world" and came up with a lot of stories about the third largest one proposed, on an Indian reservation, at 859,000 head.
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Huh? You're saying it's stupid to do something that others wouldn't anticipate?
Here's the flaw in that reasoning, borrowed from South Park:
Forensic Health Investigator: Vaccine Company X, um, did you deliberately engineer the Swine Flu Influenza so as to make obscenely huge amounts of money by selling the only cure?
VCX: What? Nooooooooooooo, don't be ridiculous!
FHI: Well, um, it looks like you did engineer it and all...
VCX: Okay, FHI? Try to give us a little credit here. If we were going to start a pande
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On the maybe-inna-lab side, if you didn't want to be discovered you'd release it in an area where you'd reasonably expect a new disease to be discovered: a rural area where people, chickens, and swine live in comparatively close proximity. (And Mexico is an extra plus because it's much easier to smuggle samples from US labs to Mexico than to India or China: you just drive.)
On the other hand, the CDC is spending some time and money investigating claims that the first cases were actually in San Diego in Sept
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If the symptoms can be believed (and the projectile vomiting seems definitive enough), this "new flu" was here in north Los Angeles County last fall.
It wouldn't surprise me if the actual direction of travel was from LA to SD and thence into Mexico, where it became a News Story because it hit Mexico a lot harder thanks to its currently atrocious living conditions.
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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.
IIRC, that is precisely the plot for one of the episodes in season one of ReGenesis. Just because it was manufactured in a lab doesn't mean it was released on purpose. Whose to say that there isn't a "lab" out in the boonies - depending on what they are studying they may need some arable land in order to test grow some of their other experiments. One foul-up in their safety procedures and the wrong samples get released into the wild...
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I quibble - the virus is NOT mild. It is at least 10 times more lethal than seasonal flu (and that's including treatment with Tamiflu), and 10 times more likely to land you in the hospital. People are only calling it mild because it doesn't have the lethality of H5N1.
Yet.
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So the virus is found in the poor countryside of Mexico...
Actually, I think the reason it was so widespread in Mexico was the Sunday communion at Church. Seeing that Mexico is primarily Catholic, one can assume they share that wine on Sunday morning. Now if you have ever participated you know that the most they do is wipe the chalice with a napkin or something.
So my best guess is that someone had the flue went to communion and got everyone sick.
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That's why we have individual little beakers (I forget what they're called) in the U.S., at least at every church I've seen in the past 50 years. It was recognised that sharing spit was a disease vector, and a needless risk to the congregation.
And as I mention above -- we had this flu (if one can define it by the symptoms) in north L.A. County last fall. Chances are it went south, not north, and given conditions in Mexico, quickly became a News Story -- despite being nothing so odd while it was still in the
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Except it's a poor location if your plan is to sell tamiflu.
China would ahve been better. this would allow it to be tracked, increase the threat, and allow the governments to stock pile over a longer period of time; which is better for business.
Sure, it's easy to use post-hoc reasoning. Always remember, hindsight is a deceitful bitch.
In related news (Score:5, Funny)
What next? (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:What next? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nick Andros, Jimi Hendrix, Sean Sananikonem and a pregnant Britney Spears fight George W. Bush?
Where can I watch this?
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Movie Rights!!! (Score:2)
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I would suggest Robert Towne as the writer, with Rade Serbedzija and/or Christian Manon to play the evil scientists. This may save you some time.
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This sounds like something out of 24
Only if it can be exposed within minutes of torturing everyone they come across, the bad guys have a mole in the Counter Terrorism Unit, and the nature of the threat changes 12 hours into the investigation.
Whoopsie (Score:3, Interesting)
If so it didn't work very well...
M-O-O-N, That spells whoops! (Score:4, Funny)
Obligatory nod to the fictional Captain Trips. Welcome to the real world. In other news, I'll be relocating to Boulder shortly...
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Here's a fun conspiracy theory: The real illness that actually kills people is on hot standby, and this was just a test to see what infection/spread rates would be like. They're just tuning the process to produce their desired results.
There is a side effect though. If you got sick in the last run, expect to get sick in the next one... or plan to move before then.
I'm not actually advancing this theory as reality, but it's still tempting to think about planning for it.
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Greatest quote from a scientific article ever. (Score:2)
"This is how science progresses," he said. "Somebody comes up with a wild idea, and then they all pounce on it and kick you to death, and then you start off on another silly idea."
-- the Author of the Study, Adrian Gibbs, 75,
Mexico bio labs (Score:2)
My response to H1N1 (Score:2, Funny)
Queen takes N1, checkmate.
Why is always humans fault. (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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Why do you think humans necessarily did this? Think about it for a minute.
We all know that Douglas Adams was right.
Where do you find lots of mice and pigs together? Right?
This was just their first attempt. They're just going to practice a bit more until they get this right. Be afraid.
Be very afraid.
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Viruses aren't evil.
Speaking of weapon of mass annoyance. [youtube.com]
And got busy... (Score:2)
"I don't think it could be a malignant thing," he said. "It's much more likely that some random thing has put these two viruses together."
[to Mr. Incredible]
Syndrome: Oh, no. Elastigirl? You married Elastigirl? Ho, ho, ho...
[sees the kids]
Syndrome: Oh - and got biz-zay!
No Sir (Score:2)
âoeYou really want a very sober assessmentâ of the science behind the claim, Fukuda said May 11 at the WHOâ(TM)s Geneva headquarters.
No thanks. I'll take drunken hysteria please.
I still remember when HIV was blamed on the US gov (Score:2, Interesting)
So, I wouldn't put it past anyone to release a virus... by mistake or on purpose.
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I know the feeling. I worked for architects and structural engineers who designed buildings of all types including giant ones like the twin towers... they think the way they buildings fell were rather suspect. These are people who know how things are built and demolished.
Chickens and Pigs (Score:2)
~kulakovich
ps - yeah, it is so the pigs get to eat the chicken waste, and exactly how this type of thing happens.
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It works even better to let ducks live right in the pigpen. That's how it's done in Chinese virus labs, anyway. ;)
ReGenesis (Score:2)
Wasn't this the plot of the ReGenesis tv series? Life imitates tv?
Also overheard at vaccine research lab... (Score:5, Funny)
Genetic recipe, not blueprint (Score:2)
Genetic recipe, not blueprint [blogspot.com]
Media grab attempt (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Okay (Score:5, Funny)
Lab 257 (Score:2)
http://www.amazon.com/Lab-257-Disturbing-Governments-Laboratory/dp/006078184X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242233395&sr=8-1
Even if this were proved to be true... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Maybe the next one WILL be... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Sounds like a good business plan to me (Score:2)
1. Create Virus ...
2. Create Vaccine
3. Release Virus
4. Profit
Who's On First? (Score:2, Funny)
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?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So . . . (Score:5, Funny)
-1 crazed conspiracy theory
You must be new here. The crazed conspiracy theories are the best part of Slashdot.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Sla
Re: (Score:2)
Have you seen my work? I don't make anybody rich~
heh.
Actually I made two guys extremely wealthy and they totally screwed me.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
-1 crazed conspiracy theory
And judging from the title they don't even seem to know WHO does the investigation. Sloppy journalism as well.
Re:So . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [google.com].
Guess that's changed now huh?
Roche might just have the best marketing department in the world. Even better than Merck [google.com] - 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.
Re:So . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
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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 [google.com].
Guess that's changed now huh?
Not neccessarily - some governments don't buy into all bullshit coming from the drug companies and after careful reviews extend the expiration date on Tamiflu [pharmtech.com].
np: Maps & Diagrams - Habakkuk (Intelligent Toys 5)
Re:So . . . (Score:5, Funny)
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 [wikipedia.org]
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Donald Rumsfeld does have some connection [snopes.com] with the company that produces Tamiflu.
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You forgot the chain saw attached to one arm... Oh wait different movie.
Re:pandemic preparation (Score:4, Funny)
Dude, you're Skeletor. You're not gonna be loved. Ever. Feared, maybe. Loathed, definitely. Loved? Keep dreaming.
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was it an accident, or was it a marketing movement by some big medicine corporation to grow the market for their products.
A little bit of each: some marketing guru mentioned "viral advertising", and unfortunately they took it too literally.