Re: Flu FYI

Alvin Toda <aet@xxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:ten522ldsbdm938riielst9uloipv2q4iu@xxxxxxx:

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?


That is the belief -- explains part of why it was from someplace
other than China.

The patients at Etaples and Aldershot were a unique breeding
ground for disease. There was a constantly shifting population
of over 100,000 very sick individuals who had extremely weakened
immune systems. They were living in a crowded community along
with the pigs, chickens and geese to feed them (sounds like a
Chinese slum) and to to it all off, the war gasses in use were
known chemical mutagens. The only thing missing for a typical
mad scientist nightmare would have been a pile of radioactive
waste.

(most mutations in the world are caused by chemicals - not
radiation)

(most of this is the recent work of John Oxford - the head of
the Brit flu project)
.

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