Re: Big breakthrough on the 1918 flu virus!

[Guest guest]

Rich

I like what is written, but often these sound bites that show so

much promise and goodwill end up being only for the media and public

consumption.All the good that's supposed to come out of many many

things has not bared any fruit, and actually half the stuff they

make a ruckus about today is complete crap, and we on these forums

just about all know it.Everythings saving your ass according to all

the pharmaceutical companies but when you pull back the skin as is

the case with the australian pharmaceutical health system- all that

promise is only marketing jibe, there saving no lives, if anything

putting them at risk.I wouldn't be jumping around with our immune

system to risk any further vaccinations as half have possably got

here on these forums with just such help.I only think you need look

at the gulf war veterans and the high death count amongst the gulf

war ilness guys since returning to show that some people should

avoid vaccinations period.You can't establish an immune response in

a sewer ...

tony

> Hi, all.

>

> This is a very big deal. This article is from the New York Times.

> The work described in it should supply information that will be a

> big help in figuring out how to protect literally the whole world

> against an avian flu pandemic. Hooray for the Armed Forces

Institute

> of Pathology and the CDC!! I think they did something really good

> this time. Yes, there's the risk of it getting loose, and yes,

> there's the risk of a megalomaniac synthesizing it and releasing

it,

> but I can't imagine that that would fulfill anyone's goals,

whoever

> they might be, because those doing it would be at risk as much as

> everyone else, and their name would live in infamy, not in glory,

> among the survivors around the world. In the meantime, there's the

> opportunity for the " good guys " to figure out how to make a

vaccine

> against it. Yes, I still do think that there are some " good guys. "

>

> Rich

>

>

> October 5, 2005

> Deadly 1918 Epidemic Linked to Bird Flu, Scientists Say

> By GINA KOLATA

> Two teams of federal and university scientists announced today that

> they had resurrected the 1918 influenza virus, the cause of one of

> history's most deadly epidemics, and had found that unlike the

> viruses that caused more recent flu pandemics of 1957 and 1968, the

> 1918 virus was actually a bird flu that jumped directly to humans.

>

> The work, being published in the journals Nature and Science,

> involved getting the complete genetic sequence of the 1918 virus,

> using techniques of molecular biology to synthesize it, and then

> using it to infect mice and human lung cells in a specially

> equipped, secure lab at the Centers for Disease Control and

> Prevention in Atlanta.

>

> The findings, the scientists say, reveal a small number of genetic

> changes that may explain why the virus was so lethal. The work also

> confirms the legitimacy of worries about the bird flu viruses that

> are now emerging in Asia.

>

> The new studies find that today's bird flu viruses share some of

the

> crucial genetic changes that occurred in the 1918 flu. The

> scientists suspect that with the 1918 flu, changes in just 25 to 30

> out of about 4,400 amino acids in the viral proteins turned the

> virus into a killer. The bird flus, known as H5N1 viruses, have a

> few, but not all of those changes.

>

> In a joint statement, Dr. Fauci, director of the National

> Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr.

> Gerberding, director of the Center for Disease Control and

> Prevention, said, " The new studies could have an immediate impact

by

> helping scientist focus on detecting changes in the evolving H5N1

> virus that might make widespread transmission among humans more

> likely. "

>

> The work also reveals that the 1918 virus is very different from

> ordinary human flu viruses. It infects cells deep in the lungs of

> mice, and infects lung cells, like the cells lining air sacs, that

> normally would be impervious to flu. And while other human flu

> viruses do not kill mice, this one, like today's bird flus, does.

>

> But Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, chief of molecular pathology

> department at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, notes that

> the bird flus have not yet spread from human to human. He hopes the

> 1918 virus will reveal what genetic changes can allow that to

> happen, helping scientists prevent a new pandemic before it starts.

>

> Scientists said the new work was immensely important, leading the

> way to identifying dangerous viruses before it is too late and to

> finding ways to disable them.

>

> " This is huge, huge, huge, " said Oxford, a professor of

> virology at St. Bartholmew's and the Royal London Hospital, who was

> not part of the research team. " It's a huge breakthrough to be able

> to put a searchlight on a virus that killed 50 million people. I

> can't think of anything bigger that's happened in virology for many

> years. "

>

> The 1918 flu showed how terrible that disease could be. It had

> been " like a dark angel hovering over us, " Dr. Oxford said. The

> virus spread and killed with terrifying speed, preferentially

> striking the young and the healthy. Alfred C. Crosby, author

> of " America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918, " wrote

that

> it " killed more humans than any other disease in a similar duration

> in the history of the world. "

>

> But the research, and its publication, also raised concerns about

> whether scientists should publish the genetic sequence of the 1918

> virus. And should they actually resurrect a killer that vanished

> from the earth nearly a century ago?

>

> " It is something we take seriously, " said Dr. Fauci of the National

> Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which helped pay for

> the work. The work was extensively reviewed, he added, and the

> National Scientific Advisory Board for Biosecurity was asked to

> decide whether the results should be made public. The board " voted

> unanimously that the benefits outweighed the risk that it would be

> used in a nefarious manner, " Dr. Fauci said.

>

> Others are not sanguine.

>

> H. Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University,

> said he had concerns about the reconstruction of the virus and

about

> publication of procedures to reconstruct the virus. " There is a

risk

> verging on inevitability, of accidental release of the virus; there

> is also a risk of deliberate release of the virus, " he said, adding

> that the 1918 flu virus " is perhaps the most effective bioweapons

> agent ever known. "

>

> But Dr. D. A. , a resident scholar at the Center for

> Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh and a leading expert on

> bioterrorism, said he agreed with the decision to reconstruct the

> virus and publish its genetic sequence.

>

> " This work is of the greatest importance, " he said, " and it is very

> important that it be published. "

>

> The story of the resurrection of the 1918 flu began in 1995, when

> Dr. Taubenberger had an idea. He knew about the 1918 flu and the

> horrors of that pandemic. Medical authorities at the time found it

> hard even to describe the devastation. At Fort Devens, wrote one

> doctor, Victor Vaughan, they saw young soldiers' " bodies stacked

> like cordwood, " dead from the flu. The epidemic, he added, " visited

> the remotest corners, taking toll of the most robust, sparing

> neither soldier nor civilian, and flaunting its red flag in the

face

> of science. "

>

> It had seemed hopeless, though, to discover what that virus looked

> like. Viruses had not been discovered in 1918 and so no one had

> isolated and saved the one causing that flu. But Dr. Taubenberger

> recalled that his institute had a warehouse of autopsy tissue,

> established by President Abraham Lincoln, who had ordered that

every

> time a military doctor examined a patient and took a tissue sample,

> a sample must also be sent to and stored at the pathology

institute.

> Dr. Taubenberger wondered if he could find lung tissue from

soldiers

> who died of the 1918 flu and, if so, if he could extract the virus.

>

> He found tissue from two soldiers, snips of lung soaked in formalin

> and encased in little blocks of wax. And in that tissue was the

> virus, broken and degraded, just a few molecules of virus, but

> there.

>

> One of the patients was Roscoe Vaughan, who got the flu when he was

> 21 years old and training at Camp , S.C. On Sept. 19, 1918,

> he reported to sick call. He died on Sept. 26, unable to breathe,

> the air sacs in his lungs filled with fluid. The other patient was

> Down, age 30, who died on the same day at Camp Upton, in New

> York. The snippets of their lung tissue had remained untouched for

> nearly 80 years.

>

> Then Dr. Taubenberger got a third sample, from a woman who had died

> in Alaska when the flu swept through her village, killing 72

adults,

> leaving just 5. The dead were buried in a mass grave in the

> permafrost, and a retired pathologist, Johann Hultin, hearing of

Dr.

> Taubenberger's quest, traveled from his home in San Francisco to

the

> gravesite in Alaska at his own expense, dug up the grave with the

> villager's permission, extracted the woman's still frozen lung

> tissue, and sent it to Dr. Taubenberger.

>

> Dr. Taubenberger and his colleagues spent nearly a decade carefully

> extracting and piecing together the viral genes, like putting

> together a jigsaw puzzle. Along the way, they published findings

> that they and others used to try to understand the 1918 flu, but

> until now they had only published the sequences of five of the

eight

> genes. The last three, which make up half the virus's length, are

> published in their paper, in Nature.

>

> In August, Terrence M. Tumpey of the Centers for Disease Control

and

> his colleagues used that information to reconstruct the 1918 virus

> and ask what would happen if they infected mice and if they

infected

> tissue from human lungs. And, they asked, would the virus remain as

> lethal if they switched some of its genes with genes from today's

> influenza viruses?

>

> The scientists took great precautions, the director of the C.D.C.,

> Gerberding, said at a news conference, using special labs

that

> were designed to protect the researchers and prevent the spread of

> the viruses. " We have erred on the side of caution at every step of

> the process, " Dr. Gerberding said.

>

> And now, the scientists say, they are starting to unmask that

> virus's secrets.

>

> In gene-swapping experiments, for example, they put the

> hemagglutinin gene from the 1918 virus for one from a more recent

> human virus. Suddenly, the reconstructed virus could no longer

> replicate in the lungs of mice and no longer killed the animals. It

> also could not attach itself to human lung cells in the lab. Yet

the

> 1918 virus' hemagglutinin protein differs in just two critical

amino

> acids from the protein of a typical avian flu virus.

>

> " Now we've shown experimentally that those two changes are crucial

> for human adaptation, " Dr. Taubenberger said. So far, he added,

they

> have not been seen in the Asian bird flus.

>

> The ultimate goal, he says, is to make a checklist of changes to

> look for in the bird viruses.

>

> " Now you have all these viruses going around and we don't know, Is

> it going to adapt to humans? Is it going to cause a pandemic? We

> don't understand the rules, " Dr. Taubenberger said. " There is a lot

> of science to go. "