1918 Scene from Pandemic
1918 flu ravaged body’s defenses — Does anyone find it unsettling that we are playing around with this old virus? I think it needs to be done now that we isolated it, but the carelessness of todays workers says to me that this thing is going to get out again! Keep your fingers crossed.
Monkeys infected with a resurrected influenza virus responsible for history’s deadliest pandemic have provided further evidence that the 1918 Spanish flu was so deadly because the virus somehow causes the immune system to overreact and attack the victims body.
“Its still a mystery,” said Dr. Michael Katze, a University of Washington virologist and one of the lead scientists on the research conducted at a high-security laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba. “We dont really know how or why this happens.”
Katze and UW colleague John Kash were among a group of researchers who, last September, reported that mice infected with the 1918 flu virus caused a violent immune response. In todays article, published in the journal Nature, they and others have shown the response in infected macaque monkeys is just as rapid and violent.
“The guys in Winnipeg are used to dealing with things like ebola and they were still quite surprised at the extreme virulence of this virus in the macaques,” Katze said.
I absolutely agree:
Deep in some darkened laboratory late at night. . . . . “so that’s the most dangerous bug in written history? Here hold my beer and watch this”. . . .
Its necessary experimentation – who can be sure its really gone? and we need to know why it killed and how to stop it
iirc, the viral dns has been recovered a few years back and experiments have been done on it ever since.
This virus isn’t overly harmful to us today, as our immune system has long adapted to it. It is, however, vitally important to understand how and why influenza is so effective in creating new, infective gene combinations every year.
I think it’s much more questionable why, years after the pox (variola) have been finally overcome as a thread for mankind, scientists in some bio-weapens labs are experimenting with their closest cousin in existence, the camel pox – in the UK and the US.
The official answer was “those viruses are readily available in Iran and Iraq and we know Iraq has been experimenting with them as early as 1995”. I now have my doubts about the WMD claims about Iraq.
pj
3,
Did you work for BASIS100?
#4, I can’t say that I understand your question.
pj
We carry enough viral DNA in our genes that could recombine and could cause the next pandemic. The only thing that bothers me about secure containment labs is the whole low bid routine.
5,
Then don’t worry about it. But thanks for responding!
#6 – University researchers don’t exactly go with the whole “low bid” like the feds do. They ask for grants from the feds and do as they wish. If anything, they would spend more and take greater care.
Interesting thought lines, though a repeat of Tuskegee seems more likely to me than the virus getting out by carelessness.
It was much colder in 1918. With todays Global Warming (TM) we don’t have to worry about this – the virus can’t survive in this climate.
The lab in question is not a university lab, rather its a level 4 facility:
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ahc-asc/media/nr-cp/2001/2001_110bk1_e.html
Related info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level
If you can’t experiment in one of these facilities where can you experiment? Besides Winnipeg if in the middle of BFN.
I, for one, welcome the coming 1918 style apocalypse.
I live in Winnipeg! In fact, I live about 4 miles from the lab in question. It is state of the art …Atlanta has no better. As mentioned, it is not a university lab. It is the top facility in Canada that tracked the SARs virus outbreak.
I have actually been inside the complex for a local Mac user group meeting conducted by one of their staff. The facility is fabulous and we had to go through security to enter the building.
As for Winnipeg being in the back of beyond …keep thinking that. I love my city. It’s got great green spaces, a vibrant cultural life (from high art opera to one of the best skate board parks in the world -Tony Hawk came all the way to test it out on his own dime!) and traffic jams that amount to minutes.
It unsettles me that animals have to suffer for research. But in light of the supposed impending “viral end of times” from bird flu and the like ….we had better put research together now …afterall, New York smells funny …they have mercury “spills” there, etc.
Actually, the amazing part about this research for me isn’t so much the virus being resurrected but how they got the infected tissue from humans. They actually dug up some poor soul who died of it. The body was preserved in permafrost reportedly in Alaska! So, maybe we had better do this research now before any other infected bodies thaw with Global Warming!!!
Since the word “Bodys” is in the title of your post, is it safe for me to assume that the following comment is on topic (and does not violate your rules)?
Just a friendly suggestion…..
Some simple spelling and grammar checking is probably a good idea….
Bodys is not a word
Bodies (plural form of Body)
Body’s (possessive form of Body)
A little known effect of the 1918 flu is that it attacks apostrophes.
This reminds me of 28 days later, now that is a great movie.
Doc, I have a strain in my Andromeda. 🙂
WTF is BASIS 100???
Reminds me of a episode of NUMB3RS… actually first season, as I recall. (I am saving episodes to DVD, as I really like the fact there is a SCIENCE BASED fiction series). VECTOR was the title, and a researcher released two different strains of the recompiled 1918 Flu, to prove which was more virulent… and should be used to make a vaccine.
(only a few series nowadays are on my ‘always watch’ list, and NUMB3RS is one of them…. there’s also a reference to it on TWiT’s Security Now when the show mentioned Onion Routing)
J/P=?
What worries me is; the same little dweebs posting here are the same ones advocating messing around with this. Look at our level 4 security history! Can anyone spell Los Alamos? And Hard drive? I feel so much better knowing the Mac club meets inside this “secure facility”