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Science Tuesday - AVIAN FLU EDITION
Mar. 28th, 2006 07:00 am
Q&A: How Serious Is the Risk?
By DENISE GRADY and GINA KOLATA, The New York Times, March 27, 2006
Over the last year, it has been impossible to watch TV or read a newspaper without encountering dire reports about bird flu and the possibility of a pandemic, a worldwide epidemic. First Asia, then Europe, now Africa: like enemy troops moving into place for an attack, the bird flu virus known as A(H5N1) has been steadily advancing. The latest country to report human cases is Azerbaijan, where five of seven people have died. The virus has not reached the Americas, but it seems only a matter of time before it turns up in birds here.
Even so, a human pandemic caused by A(H5N1) is by no means inevitable. Many researchers doubt it will ever happen. The virus does not infect people easily, and those who do contract it almost never spread it to other humans. Bird flu is what the name implies: mostly an avian disease. It has infected tens of millions of birds but fewer than 200 people, and nearly all of them have caught it from birds.
( Read More )
The Skeptic: On the Front: A Pandemic Is Worrisome but 'Unlikely'
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL, The New York Times, March 28, 2006
OXFORD, England — The Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City, where Dr. Jeremy Farrar works, has treated about two dozen people with avian influenza in the last three years.
With that tiny number, Dr. Farrar and his Vietnamese colleagues probably have more clinical experience than any other doctors with the A(H5N1) virus — the dreaded germ that international health officials fear may ignite the next flu pandemic.
( Read More )
The 1918 Flu Killed Millions. Does It Hold Clues for Today?
By GINA KOLATA, The New York Times, March 28, 2006
Flu researchers know the epidemic of 1918 all too well.
It was the worst infectious disease epidemic ever, killing more Americans in just a few months than died in World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam Wars combined. Unlike most flu strains, which kill predominantly the very old and the very young, this one — a bird flu, as it turns out — struck young adults in their 20's, 30's and 40's, leaving children orphaned and families without wage earners.
So now, as another bird flu spreads across the globe, killing domestic fowl and some wild birds and, ominously, infecting and killing more than 100 people as well, many scientists are looking back to 1918. Did that flu pandemic get started in the same way as this one? Will today's bird flu turn into tomorrow's human pandemic?
( Read More )
Making a Ferret Sneeze for Hints to the Transmission of Bird Flu
By DENISE GRADY, The New York Times, March 28, 2006
ATLANTA — One way to collect nasal secretions from a ferret is to anesthetize it, hold a petri dish under its snout and squirt a little salt water up its nose so that it will sneeze into the dish.
At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ferret sneezes are frozen in tiny vials and locked up in a high-security chamber called an enhanced biosafety Level 3 laboratory. It takes a fingerprint scan to get in, and an iris scan to open the freezer. Scientists wear scrub suits, gowns, double gloves and hoods, breathe filtered air and open vials only by reaching into a safety cabinet designed to keep germs from escaping into the air.
The vials are in this lab because the animals have been exposed to A(H5N1), the notorious avian flu virus that has swept across Asia, Europe and Africa, wiping out flocks of poultry and sometimes killing people as well. Researchers at the disease centers and in other labs are studying the transmission and virulence of bird flu in ferrets and mice, trying to answer questions that take on more urgency as the virus advances.
( Read More )
The Doctor's World: With Every Epidemic, Health Officials Face Tough Choices
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, M.D., The New York Times, March 28, 2006
To warn. Or not to warn.
That classic dilemma in public health has been brought into sharp focus by the A(H5N1) avian influenza virus that is spreading around the world and has led to the death of tens of millions of birds in Asia and Europe.
For health officials, few decisions can be as crucial as deciding if and when to sound early warnings when they believe that an epidemic is possible but do not know whether it will become a real catastrophe.
The dilemma often concerns the influenza virus because it continually mutates, leading to human pandemics that predictably occur unpredictably. Although scientists lack the knowledge to predict when and what strain will cause the next influenza pandemic, they say they are convinced that another one is inevitable and so preparation must start as soon as a threat is detected.
That kind of immediate action occurred in 1976 after four cases of swine influenza were detected at Fort Dix, a military base in New Jersey. Fearing that the cases represented an early warning of an impending pandemic of influenza, Public Health Service officials rushed President Gerald R. Ford, who was running for re-election, into recommending a swine influenza shot for every American.
( Read More )
By DENISE GRADY and GINA KOLATA, The New York Times, March 27, 2006
Over the last year, it has been impossible to watch TV or read a newspaper without encountering dire reports about bird flu and the possibility of a pandemic, a worldwide epidemic. First Asia, then Europe, now Africa: like enemy troops moving into place for an attack, the bird flu virus known as A(H5N1) has been steadily advancing. The latest country to report human cases is Azerbaijan, where five of seven people have died. The virus has not reached the Americas, but it seems only a matter of time before it turns up in birds here.
Even so, a human pandemic caused by A(H5N1) is by no means inevitable. Many researchers doubt it will ever happen. The virus does not infect people easily, and those who do contract it almost never spread it to other humans. Bird flu is what the name implies: mostly an avian disease. It has infected tens of millions of birds but fewer than 200 people, and nearly all of them have caught it from birds.
( Read More )
The Skeptic: On the Front: A Pandemic Is Worrisome but 'Unlikely'
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL, The New York Times, March 28, 2006
OXFORD, England — The Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City, where Dr. Jeremy Farrar works, has treated about two dozen people with avian influenza in the last three years.
With that tiny number, Dr. Farrar and his Vietnamese colleagues probably have more clinical experience than any other doctors with the A(H5N1) virus — the dreaded germ that international health officials fear may ignite the next flu pandemic.
( Read More )
The 1918 Flu Killed Millions. Does It Hold Clues for Today?
By GINA KOLATA, The New York Times, March 28, 2006
Flu researchers know the epidemic of 1918 all too well.
It was the worst infectious disease epidemic ever, killing more Americans in just a few months than died in World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam Wars combined. Unlike most flu strains, which kill predominantly the very old and the very young, this one — a bird flu, as it turns out — struck young adults in their 20's, 30's and 40's, leaving children orphaned and families without wage earners.
So now, as another bird flu spreads across the globe, killing domestic fowl and some wild birds and, ominously, infecting and killing more than 100 people as well, many scientists are looking back to 1918. Did that flu pandemic get started in the same way as this one? Will today's bird flu turn into tomorrow's human pandemic?
( Read More )
Making a Ferret Sneeze for Hints to the Transmission of Bird Flu
By DENISE GRADY, The New York Times, March 28, 2006
ATLANTA — One way to collect nasal secretions from a ferret is to anesthetize it, hold a petri dish under its snout and squirt a little salt water up its nose so that it will sneeze into the dish.
At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ferret sneezes are frozen in tiny vials and locked up in a high-security chamber called an enhanced biosafety Level 3 laboratory. It takes a fingerprint scan to get in, and an iris scan to open the freezer. Scientists wear scrub suits, gowns, double gloves and hoods, breathe filtered air and open vials only by reaching into a safety cabinet designed to keep germs from escaping into the air.
The vials are in this lab because the animals have been exposed to A(H5N1), the notorious avian flu virus that has swept across Asia, Europe and Africa, wiping out flocks of poultry and sometimes killing people as well. Researchers at the disease centers and in other labs are studying the transmission and virulence of bird flu in ferrets and mice, trying to answer questions that take on more urgency as the virus advances.
( Read More )
The Doctor's World: With Every Epidemic, Health Officials Face Tough Choices
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, M.D., The New York Times, March 28, 2006
To warn. Or not to warn.
That classic dilemma in public health has been brought into sharp focus by the A(H5N1) avian influenza virus that is spreading around the world and has led to the death of tens of millions of birds in Asia and Europe.
For health officials, few decisions can be as crucial as deciding if and when to sound early warnings when they believe that an epidemic is possible but do not know whether it will become a real catastrophe.
The dilemma often concerns the influenza virus because it continually mutates, leading to human pandemics that predictably occur unpredictably. Although scientists lack the knowledge to predict when and what strain will cause the next influenza pandemic, they say they are convinced that another one is inevitable and so preparation must start as soon as a threat is detected.
That kind of immediate action occurred in 1976 after four cases of swine influenza were detected at Fort Dix, a military base in New Jersey. Fearing that the cases represented an early warning of an impending pandemic of influenza, Public Health Service officials rushed President Gerald R. Ford, who was running for re-election, into recommending a swine influenza shot for every American.
( Read More )
