Re: Flu FYI

On 23 Mar 2006 07:16:55 GMT, Earl <neptune@xxxxxx> wrote:

El Castor <anyonethere@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:qJudnWEZLtucKLzZRVn-gA@xxxxxxxxxxx:


"J.C." <jccsplace@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Another unfortunate fact is that so far there is only
evidence of 6 migratory birds having had the avian flu. Most
of the episodes of avian outbreak has been traced to the
illegal selling of poultry out of countries like Nigeria.

Yes, we have to keep those poultry sales legal. (-8

By the way, I just heard yesterday that researchers who have
exhumed the bodies of soldiers who died during the 1918 flu
pandemic have been able to reconstruct the DNA of the virus.
It appears to be avian in origin.

IIRC the exumed bodies yielded no virus. But luckily the tissue
samples at the US Army hospitals yielded positive samples which
were then gene spliced.

Just as a note for the historians. The origin has been
attributed to US Army personnel who picked up the virus at Ft
Riley and then carried it across the Atlantic in 1918 and then
back again,

British researchers have found cases in their army records that
it was already active in Belgium in 1916. Best guess now is that
a combination of pigs and fowl together with sick soldiers at
the hospitals combined with the mutagenic factors in the gas
attacks. When the Brits sent experts to train the Yanks they
also carried the virus across the pond to infect the new
recruits.

Interesting history. An example of a flu which did NOT come from
China. But "mutagenic factors"? Does that mean that the virus'
mutation was sped up by the gas attack?
.

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