Image: Photoillustration by Kyle Bean and Sam Hofman
In Brief
- Birds are a natural reservoir for influenza viruses that sometimes jump to humans.
- H5N1 strains in particular have some virologists worried because mortality may be high among the few people who have been infected, mainly from direct contact with birds.
- After the September 11 attacks, biodefense spending soared, leading to recent research on H5N1 lab-made strains that are transmissible among mammals.
- This work set off a debate between biodefense experts, who argue that the new H5N1 strains are potentially dangerous and want restrictions on research, and scientists, who argue that research on dangerous pathogens is important for improving surveillance of natural outbreaks and that hampering such work would do more harm than good.
The chickens were already getting sick when Yoshihiro Kawaoka arrived in the U.S. in August 1983. A few months before, in April, a bird flu virus had arisen in the poultry farms of eastern Pennsylvania, but veterinarians had deemed it to be “low pathogenic”—meaning it made chickens sick but did not kill many of them. As the virus swept through the poultry farms, however, a new strain developed. Chickens began to die in large numbers, and farmers started to fear for their livelihoods. The state called in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which set up a temporary command and control center in a strip mall outside of Lancaster. To contain the epidemic, it culled 17 million birds from Pennsylvania down through Virginia.
Kawaoka was a young researcher from Japan who was starting work at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. His boss, virologist Robert Webster, had a theory that human influenza viruses originate in bird populations—that they circulate harmlessly among ducks and geese and that, every once in a while, a strain will evolve the ability to live in the human upper respiratory tract. To combat human influenza, Webster asserted, you first had to understand bird flu. In November, when Webster heard that the outbreak had become serious, he dropped everything and headed to its epicenter.
This article was originally published with the title Waiting to Explode.
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6 Comments
Add CommentJust step back a few paces and have a look at the bigger picture. WOW
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn my neck of the woods culling of salmon is now taking place in another the total bat population has been wiped out. Dead whales, seals n bears in the high arctic. Sht guys we got dead trees, bees, bats n birds and --
The potential discovery in any subject is endless
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/01/22/antarctica-is-definitely-feeling-the-heat-from-global-warming/
A Drug Cure will always come too late to save Humanity
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn 1997 the pandemic was stopped in its tracks in Hong Kong. The system adopted was not reliant upon a drug cure but that prevention was better than cure. It worked and Ken Shortridge who devised the strategy was given the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Prize in medicine, The Prince Mahidol Award. By doing this Prof. Shortridge stopped a bird flu pandemic starting and which had the propensity to kill millions (the only one ever to do so and prevent the deaths of incalculable numbers). The premise was, ‘don’t let it start in the first place’.
Why has the establishment therefore forgotten the first dictum of medical health that ‘prevention is better than cure'?
In the future humanity has to adopted the only global strategy that will stop the greatest human mass killer ever - http://avian-influenza.cirad.fr/content/download/1931/11789/file/Kennedy-F-Shortridge.pdf
And why have those who are advocating a drug cure not taken on-board this system that has worked? This question is postulated because the Swine Flu pandemic showed that with reference to the Spanish Flu in 1918 which took up to 100 million lives, that a cure would come too late. In this respect it was not until 7 months 1 week that a vaccine was created and then it had to be manufactured and thereafter distributed to the masses (a logistics nightmare). In the second wave of the Spanish Flu, after the virus had mutated again into a human-to-human killer, it did its worst between week 16 and week 26, some 1 month 1 week before a cure was found for the Swine Flu pandemic.
Therefore whatever way we look at it a drug vaccine will come too late to save us, no matter who you are from the president of the United States downwards. Fact not fiction.
Margaret Chan, Director-General of the WHO says that it is only a matter of time not when the killer virus will emerge - may be next week, next month, next year or whenever; but it will happen sometime and such a pandemic according to pandemic researchers is overdue. Therefore we are living on borrowed time and we have to adopt Prof. Shortridge's strategy for the good of all humanity.
Dr David Hill
Chief Executive
So, they're intentionally reducing our food supply because they are concerned that, what, cooking the meat won't eliminate the pathogen? Who is to say that those diseases weren't necessary to eliminate weaknesses in our genome (through culling)? We are constantly evolving, remember.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor some reason, I think it's the WHO that is waiting for bird flu to explode; money making propositions await those who invent vaccines that hardly work. Of course, speeding the process along is also an option ...
It is clear that virologists and numerous organizations have a strong handle on communicable disease: The HIV plague has generated great interest, and although those infected can rarely be cured, the disease has caused great advances in virology and public health response.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy explode, one must realize that what is meant is numbers related to extremely small percentages of humans.
Emergent viruses are inevitable, but the world culture is well-prepared to handle these before they affect billions. HIV is a relative failure because sex is a big transmitter, and epidemiology depends upon preventing transmission, as well as other methods. The HIV virus is a very mutable retrovirus, more so than most - that is, more quickly able to mutate.
Do remember that millions are only .1% of billions.
Viruses mutate far faster than humans, but the human population is so large that it would be unlikely that "...save Humanity" has any meaning whatsoever. It would take quite a drop to significantly diminish human genetic variation, or even affect most humans. You're safe, so hysterics and capitalization of your ingroup is unnecessary.
With increasingly easy tools, many more endeavors can work on virus mutation, and both small inadvertent and small purposeful outbreaks are facilitated. Do remember that high virulence tends to burn out through mortality effects - again, HIV works well due to slow transition to effective mortality, while quick mortality results in the failure of a disease to spread widely.
With large populations of both domestic fowl and humans, some species-jumping is inevitable. We've seen new emergent viruses carried by pets infect wild canids and sea mammals, yet those wild lives are not of interest to many humans so preventative measures are not taken.
Webster's theory of bird origins of influenza is pretty well supported by DNA studies.
We know all about HIV/AIDS and have been in conference calls over the 5 continents with the Gates Foundation and others over ways of reducing the problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHumankind will be devastated eventually with our present mindset of cure and not prevention. It will affect every family throughout the world but where I agree that it will not eliminate humankind altogether.
But, it will keep coming back time and time again as a cure cannot be found, manufactured and distributed worldwide in time. That is a fact based on the comparison with the Swine Flu pandemic and Spanish Flu.
A truism.
Therefore keep believing that drugs will stop this but where I can assure you that someone close to you will not be around after the event. They probably thought the same way in 1918 and that they would not be affected, but they were.
We have to get real with our thinking and what history has told us. If not we really aren’t intelligent at all and deserve all that we get.
Dr David Hill
Chief Executive
World Innovation Foundation
Mosquitoes spread malaria and dengue, birds spread avian flu, bats spread rabies and Hendra virus, gay airline stewards spread AIDS world-wide. The lesson to be learnt from this? That flying is a dirty habit. Remember that you jet-setters.
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