The Avian flu in Asia has been all over the news lately. It is bad enough to have to worry about that outbreak turning into a pandemic.
But there is another virus on the scene that is potentially more scary, the WSN/33 virus, which combines genetic bits of avian flu and parts of a human virus that is related to the virus responsible for the 1918 pandemic. Several strains of this other virus have been found in Korea, in swine. As per this article, each of the strains were genetically manipulated.
Theories abound, and one is that WSN/33 was developed as a bio-terrorism agent. What do you think?
Any scientists out there?
http://discuss.agonist.org/yabbse/index.php?board=6;action=display;threadid=20905 Scary Near-Miss Shows Bioterrorism Vulnerabilities
« on: February 21, 2005, 07:36:12 pm » --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Commentary at
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/02220504/Laboratory_WSN33.htmlhttp://www.recombinomics.com/News/02220503/Bioterrorists_WSN33.htmlhttp://www.recombinomics.com/News/02220502/Spontaneous_Generation_WSN33.htmlhttp://www.recombinomics.com/News/02220501/Bioterror_Pandemic_Preparedness.htmlhttp://www.cfr.org/pub7839/laurie_garrett/scary_nearmiss_shows_bioterrorism_vulnerabilities.php Scary Near-Miss Shows Bioterrorism Vulnerabilities
By Laurie Garrett
Council on Foreign Relations, February 16, 2005<snip>
In December, somebody from one of South Korea's veterinary schools did what hundreds of virus-hunters do the world over: he or she e-mailed to GenBank the genetic details of newly identified viruses. In this case, the posting said,
six new strains of influenza had been found in local pigs. Each of the strains were genetically manipulated and contained genetic bits of an avian virus unlike those now prompting separate bird flu concerns.Worse, there were large segments of a flu bug dubbed WSN/33, a human flu virus altered in 1933 in a laboratory by infecting mice, resulting in a strain that kills mouse brain cells. The original 1933 human virus was related to that which caused the 1918 pandemic flu, killing an estimated 50 million people.
Nothing even remotely like the WSN/33 flu has circulated in the world since 1956, and this particular WSN-avian flu combination is not known to have ever occurred naturally, so most of the global population would have little or no immunity to the virus. Since neither the particular bird flu strain nor the WSN/33 flu were known to
exist outside of laboratories, one Internet journal concluded that "these sequences could represent a military experiment that resulted in an unplanned release. Moreover, at this point, bioterrorism cannot be ruled out."The World Health Organization's (WHO) influenza branch responded later in December, convening a teleconferenced meeting of flu experts to analyze the GenBank information and exchanging a flurry of e-mails.
They concluded somebody had made a lab error. On January 27, the South Korean government confirmed a laboratory error had been made and promised to send samples of the six viruses to WHO's Hong Kong collaborative lab.
But at press time the South Koreans had not sent the promised samples. Internet chatter about possible North (or South) Korean bioweapons experiments persists. This is dangerous.What happened? Nobody, except perhaps the silent South Koreans, knows for sure. But there are two general hypotheses, WHO says. Someone in the South Korean veterinary lab may have innocently pulled the wrong computer file of genetic sequence data into an e-mailed transmission to GenBank, resulting in the display of this potentially terrible viral code. The lab in question may have contaminated its research samples. Or the South Korean lab is working on a flu vaccine, using the WSN/33 human sequence from 1933 as a basic template and deliberately scrambling it with various animal flus. In such a scenario, the scientists accidentally created these disturbing influenza strains in the lab in their vaccine production effort.
I cannot accept the vaccine idea: why in the world would anybody be making a vaccine against a type of human flu that hasn't circulated on earth for more than 70 years? If lab contamination or data input error are the problem, I am left to fret about a host of recent lab accidents that, in some cases, have allowed dangerous microbes to leak, including SARS and tularemia.If we are seriously concerned about the possibility that nefarious individuals or groups might make bioweapons using state-of-the-art genetic manipulations, the chain of events leading to recognition that such experiments were under way might look very much like what occurred with these Korean swine strains. The WHO would be under pressure--by international agreement under the Bioweapons Convention of 1972--to definitively prove, or disprove, allegations. Does WHO have sufficient funding, manpower, and clout to do this job at this time? No. The core budget of WHO is a mere $400 million and only two scientists are employed full time to monitor new epidemics and rumors of bioterrorism. An additional handful of full-time staff leads efforts to monitor flu strains around the world.
<snip>
An article warning about the avian flu virus
***********************************************
Vietnam - Deadly Avian Flu May Have Been Underestimated
BBC News Online
2-16-5 The spread of the deadly avian influenza virus may have been underestimated because of a misunderstanding of how it affects the body, British scientists have said.
Oxford University experts studying deaths in Viet Nam suggest the disease can attack all parts of the body, not just the lungs as had been thought. They told the New England Journal of Medicine (see comment below: Engl J Med 352;7 http://www.nejm.org 17 Feb 2005. - Mod.CPb) that they also believe humans could pass the virus on to each other. So far, there have been 42 bird flu deaths, all in Asian countries. But the Oxford University scientists say their findings suggest the number of cases of human infection with the virus may have been underestimated.
The World Health Organization said it would change its definition of what constituted an avian influenza infection. So far, the WHO says there have been 55 confirmed cases of avian influenza in humans, and 42 deaths. However,
experts believe millions could be at risk if the virus acquires the ability to jump from person to person by combining with human influenza virus to make a new, mutated (reassortant) version. The researchers examined the deaths of 2 young children -- a brother and sister -- who lived in a single room with their parents in southern Viet Nam. They were admitted to hospital suffering from gastroenteritis and acute encephalitis, which are common ailments in the country. Neither displayed respiratory problems, which have been considered typical in cases of avian influenza.
But analysis revealed that the 4-year-old boy had traces of the virus in his faeces, blood, nose and in the fluid around the brain. This indicates the virus -- known as H5N1 -- can attack all parts of the body, not just the lungs. It is suspected his 9-year-old sister, who died 2 weeks earlier in February 2004, was also suffering from the virus.
The lead researcher is Dr Menno de Jong, a virologist at the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit who is based at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh
. He said: "This illustrates that when someone is suffering from any severe illness we should consider if avian influenza might be the cause. It may be possible to treat but you have to act in the early stages, so awareness of the whole spectrum of symptoms in an emerging disease like avian flu is vital. It appears this virus is progressively adapting to an increasing range of mammals in which it can cause infection, and the range of disease in humans is wide and clearly includes encephalitis."
<snip>
http://www.rense.com/general63/avo.htm
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
