Ratmannnn
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New Bird Flu could kill 150 Million World Wide!
Thursday, Oct. 06, 2005
Catastrophic 1918 Pandemic Was Also A Bird Flu
Scientists discover there's more than one way to trigger a global outbreak
By MICHAEL LEMONICK
For two years now, public health experts have been nervously monitoring the progress of a virulent strain of influenza known as H5N1, which has killed 140 million birds, mostly in Asia. Humans catch it too—100 or so have been hospitalized with the illness worldwide, and about 60 have died—but since this flu doesn't pass directly from one person to another, it isn't a serious threat so far. If it mutates, though, to allow easy human-to-human transmission, scientists fear it could rival the legendary Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 and 1919, which ravaged the planet, killing more than 50 million people.
A series of papers published this week in the journals Science and Nature suggest that such a mutation is all too plausible. Working from snippets of tissue from victims of that long-ago plague—one from an Inuit woman buried in permanently frozen soil in Alaska, two others from autopsy samples taken from American soldiers who died in the Northeast—scientists from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, the Centers for Disease Control and other institutions determined that the lethal Spanish flu was itself a bird flu that evolved to infect humans directly.
None of the tissue samples contained an intact virus, but the researchers used the fragments they found to recreate the lethal virus, which they tested in mice and on human lung cells to confirm its virulence. They discovered that the 1918 bug was different in one crucial way from the viruses responsible for the flu pandemics of 1957 and 1968, better known as the Asian and the Hong Kong pandemics. (A pandemic is a worldwide epidemic.) Those were human influenza viruses that had incorporated a few bird flu genes, but the 1918 virus was a bird flu that changed to permit more efficient human-to-human transmission. It wasn't that many changes, either. Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, one of the investigators, estimates that it took only about 25 mutations to cause that change—not a very large number, considering that influenza viruses mutate relatively easily. (That's why at least one new strain appears nearly every year).
It isn't yet clear precisely which mutations are key to turning a lethal bird flu into a worldwide human health crisis. And it's by no means certain that H5N1 will make that deadly leap. But sooner or later, experts say, it will happen. That's why 65 nations are meeting today and tomorrow in Washington to try and figure out how to respond when it does.
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10/6/2005, 3:32 pm
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drwaldo
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Re: New Bird Flu could kill 150 Million World Wide!
:hea: look out tongiro.
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10/6/2005, 9:52 pm
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drwaldo
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Re: New Bird Flu could kill 150 Million World Wide!
:ha: I've already had it twice,it can't kill me!
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12/24/2005, 2:30 am
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mr twister
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Re: New Bird Flu could kill 150 Million World Wide!
surprized he aint callin it the Jim Bird Flu??? :cki:
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Twisted Basserd! Productions...
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12/26/2005, 12:10 am
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L L
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Re: New Bird Flu could kill 150 Million World Wide!
Hope you both are feeling better and that the old flu flies the coop....
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12/26/2005, 8:53 pm
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Alfonso AbsorbineJr
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Re: New Bird Flu could kill 150 Million World Wide!
Bird Flu has moved to Turkey now. I keep hoping it will come here and wipe out a third of the aggravating self centered cell phone using cruise taking back stabbing me first bastards in this Country. I want it to take my arse too butt only after I get to see a coupla million bastards dies before me.
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Where be all da white wimmins be at?
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1/9/2006, 1:14 pm
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Steve A
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Re: New Bird Flu could kill 150 Million World Wide!
more joy and sunshine brought to you by the 'Phons....
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Be nice to America.
Or we'll bring democracy to your country.
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1/9/2006, 8:03 pm
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Big Johnson
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Re: New Bird Flu could kill 150 Million World Wide!
I think the chitlin eater and me may go Home and rip the phone off the wall and watch a bunch of 'end of the World' movies. Think we'll start with '28 Days later' which is a Good English made Rage Pandemic movie.
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"Me and Mrs Jones, we got a thang going on"
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1/9/2006, 8:16 pm
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Steve A
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Re: New Bird Flu could kill 150 Million World Wide!
yeah I liked 28 Days, but I fell asleep during part of it so need to rent it again...
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Be nice to America.
Or we'll bring democracy to your country.
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1/9/2006, 9:25 pm
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tkitna
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Re: New Bird Flu could kill 150 Million World Wide!
The wife and I just watched the new 'War Of The Worlds' and liked it although that Katie Holmes poking bastards in it.
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Winner of EIGHT Phunnies and counting!
Winner of TWO Moondog Fantasy Football titles and counting!
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1/9/2006, 10:23 pm
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