BIRD PANDEMIC MIGHT BE A GOOD THING

[Jeffersons Ghost]

If Bird Pandemic will kill Chicken-Hawks and chicken-crap Democrats in DC, it can truly benefit America but here are the REAL facts, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) As you review this information keep in mind VERY FEW effective vaccines for VIRUSES have EVER been developed. Another Katrina response might be in the making as our leaders vote on the issue on C-SPAN 2.
http://www.niaid.nih.gov.



According to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
Fast-track recruitment has begun for a trial to investigate the safety of a vaccine against H5N1 avian influenza, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced today.

Sites in Rochester, NY, Baltimore and Los Angeles will enroll a total of 450 healthy adults. The clinical sites are part of the NIAID-sponsored Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Units (VTEU).

“While there have been relatively few cases worldwide of H5N1 avian influenza infection in humans, the public health community is concerned that the virus will develop the capability of efficiently spreading from human to human and thus create a risk for a worldwide pandemic,” says NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.

“NIAID has supported research on H5N1, the strain responsible for this deadly form of avian influenza, since 1997 when the first cases in humans were reported. The initiation of this vaccine trial marks a key advance in our efforts to prepare to respond to an avian flu pandemic,” adds Dr. Fauci.

Sanofi pasteur, Swiftwater, PA, manufactured the trial vaccine, which is an inactivated vaccine made from an H5N1 virus isolated in Southeast Asia in 2004. Sanofi pasteur, formerly Aventis Pasteur, was awarded a contract by NIAID to manufacture the H5N1 vaccine in May 2004.

This Phase I trial will test the vaccine’s safety and ability to generate an immune response in 450 healthy adults aged 18 to 64. If the vaccine is shown to be safe in adults, there are plans to test it in other populations, such as the elderly and children.

H5N1 avian influenza leads to severe disease in both birds and humans. Between January 2004 and March 11, 2005, there were 69 confirmed cases of and 46 deaths from H5N1 infection in humans reported to the World Health Organization. To date, there has been a small number of cases where human-to-human transmission of the virus may have occurred. However, public health experts fear that the virus may evolve into one that is more easily transmitted between people. If this were to happen, a worldwide pandemic could follow.

Influenza pandemics are global outbreaks that emerge infrequently and unpredictably and involve strains of virus to which humans have little or no immunity. H5N1 is one such flu virus strain. The last influenza pandemic swept the globe in 1968; many public health officials believe the world is overdue for another one.

Only in America can we become and "Instant Expert on Bird Pandemic:"

Since 2004 the virus has ripped through poultry and wild bird populations across Eurasia, and had a 53% mortality rate in the first 147 people it is known to have infected. Health authorities fear this strain, or its descendent, could cause a lethal new flu pandemic in people with the potential to kill billions.

Flu has been a regular scourge of humanity for thousands of years. Flu viruses each possess a mere 10 genes encoded in RNA. All of the 16 known genetic subgroups originate in water birds, and especially in ducks. The virus is well adapted to their immune systems, and does not usually make them sick. This leaves the animals free to move around and spread the virus - just what it needs to persist.

Sometimes a bird flu virus jumps to an animal whose immune system it is not adapted to. In chickens - originally a forest bird and not a natural host - it causes a moderate disease but can readily mutate to a more severe, highly pathogenic strain. Just such a strain of H5N1 flu, named after its surface proteins, began rampaging through large chicken farms in east Asia sometime before 2003.

[iconocrastic]

1. Then again it might not.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

2. It WILL happen again...

the only question is WHEN!