Saturday, May 16, 2009

swine flu updates: theories, queries & phase 6

... swine flu flashbacks: part 1, 2, 3 & 4 ...

who says swine flu not an accident from a lab
swine flu updates: theories, queries & phase 6from nytimes: The swine flu virus did not result from a laboratory accident, the World Health Organization said Thursday, working to debunk rumors started by an Australian virologist and circulated by news outlets all over the world. “We took this very seriously,” Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the agency’s deputy director general, said of the virologist’s assertion. “But the evidence suggests that this is a naturally occurring virus, not a laboratory-derived virus.” ... The virus rumor was started by Adrian J. Gibbs, a retired plant virologist from the Australian National University, who previously published work in the journal Science questioning the idea, now accepted, that the 1918 pandemic started as a bird flu... His theory was reported by Bloomberg News on Tuesday. Even though scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were skeptical and some prominent virologists openly derisive, news outlets have repeated and magnified the theory, adding speculation about bioterrorism that even Dr. Gibbs repudiated. He was also interviewed Thursday on the ABC News program “Good Morning America.” Dr. Fukuda said a W.H.O. panel of experts had concluded that “the hypothesis does not really stand up to scrutiny... This is healthy... This is much better than dealing with rumors where you don’t know where the mistake comes from and can’t correct it.” Persistent false rumors, like those that AIDS is not caused by a virus or that polio vaccine sterilizes Muslim girls, have devastated efforts to control other diseases. Scientists have yet to pinpoint the origin of the swine flu virus, the earliest cases of which were found in Veracruz, Mexico. It contains genes from flu viruses that normally circulate in pigs in Europe and Asia, as well as avian and human genes.

who to declare phase 6 on swine flu*
swine flu hits india & turkey*
flu could reschedule meccan hajj*
cdc: flu virus 'not going away'*
swine flu strikes ny assistant principal*
1st legal action targets a pig farm*
who says swine flu set to spread*
ny schools in lockdown after mexican flu scare*
cdc swine flu report is ‘gross underestimate'*

updates from may20:
swine flu may have infected more than 100,000 americans*
new flu virtually everywhere in US now, cdc says*
swine flu not yet a full-blown pandemic, uk & japan tell world health org*
united nations to discuss swine flu vaccine*
who may raise alert level as swine flu cases leap in japan*
companies could vaccinate 4.9 billion against h1n1*

updates from may21:
swine flu spreading in japan, forcing school closures*
swine flu spreading in japan, forcing school closuresschools close in boston due to swine flu scare*
US swine flu deaths hit double-digits*
google: more people will die from swine flu if we cannot retain search data*
who hesitates over declaring flu pandemic*
prison outbreak? 4 more have swine flu at rikers*
arsenic in contaminated water increases susceptibility to h1n1 influenza*
mexico city lifts swine flu curbs*
study detects flu immunity in older people*

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