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Bird Flu, Swine Flu … and Now Bat Flu?
Scientists have found a new influenza virus that infects bats.
But don’t pull out the hand sanitizer leftover from the H1N1, or swine flu, pandemic just yet. When asked about the implications of this discovery for human health, one of the researchers, Ruben Donis, said: “It’s still too early to tell.”
We still don’t know that this bat flu virus can infect people, according to Donis, who is chief of the molecular virology and vaccines branch in the influenza division at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
He and a team of American and Guatemalan researchers isolated the virus from fruit-eating, little yellow-shouldered bats in Guatemala. So far, there is no Read more…
CDC admits flu vaccines don’t work (which is why you need a new one every year)
I’m always amused by the purchasing process of electronics or appliances at big box stores. On one hand, as their sales associate calmly explains to you, whatever product you’re buying is such high quality that you’ll be extremely satisfied with your purchase. But on the other hand, it’s also such a complete piece of junk that you’d be smart to add on a two-year extended warranty so that when the gizmo breaks five seconds after you open the box, you can get a replacement for free.
The CDC and the vaccine industry are fronting a similar bit of contradictory logic. “Our vaccines work so well that they offer almost total immunity from the flu,” they claim. And yet somehow they also work so poorly that they “wear off” after a year and require you to be re-vaccinated annually.
This is The Great Big Lie of the vaccine industry: The lie that says you have be re-vaccinated each and every year, often with the exact same strains you were vaccinated with the previous year. The coming winter flu vaccines for 2011, for example, are being manufactured with the same Read more…
Report warns flu pandemic could kill 200,000 in Britain
50 percent of the British population could develop symptoms of the flu pandemic and may cost the British economy $42 million (GBP 28 billion).
A report released Tuesday identifies the outbreak of a new influenza pandemic as one of the greatest threats facing Britain. The U.K. Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011 estimates the number of potential deaths because of a new flu pandemic could be as high as 200,000.
Aside from the anticipated deaths, the report by the Department of Health said 50 percent of the British population could develop symptoms of the flu pandemic and may cost the British economy Read more…
Avian influenza continues to spread across Asian countries
Across Japan a total of 22 cases of avian flu have been reported as the infection continues to spread. On Sunday, 33,000 more chickens were culled in the Miyazaki Prefecture, bringing the total chickens culled to around 990,000 birds since the first infection was reported on Jan 22, 2011.
In India, further cases have been confirmed on a Tripura farm where the culling process has started to take place. This is the second time bird flu has been detected in the state following an outbreak in February this year. Health and veterinary workers had then culled more than 4,000 chickens.
South Korea has also had 12,400 birds test positive for avian flu last week, marking the 49th outbreak since December 29. The latest outbreak is a poultry farm in Cheonan, 92 km south of Seoul, the National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service (NVRQS) said. All ducks on the farm will be culled with quarantine authorities asking nearby farms to be vigilant and protect their birds.
This is the second case of the highly pathogenic avian influenza reported in the country this month although the number of AI cases has started to fall off in recent weeks. The government has culled more than 6.04 million birds in six provinces across the country.
AP IMPACT: Past medical testing on humans revealed
In this June 25, 1945 picture, army doctors expose patients to malaria-carrying mosquitoes in the malaria ward at Stateville Penitentiary in Crest Hill, Ill. Around the time of World War II, prisoners were enlisted to help the war effort by participating in studies that could help the troops. A series of malaria studies at Stateville Penitentiary in Illinois and two other penitentiaries were designed to test antimalarial drugs that could help soldiers fighting in the Pacific. Shocking as it may seem, government doctors once thought it was fine to experiment on disabled people and prison inmates.
By MIKE STOBBE,
ATLANTA – Shocking as it may seem, U.S. government doctors once thought it was fine to experiment on disabled people and prison inmates. Such experiments included giving hepatitis to mental patients in Connecticut, squirting a pandemic flu virus up the noses of prisoners in Maryland, and injecting cancer cells into chronically ill people at a New York hospital.
Much of this horrific history is 40 to 80 years old, but it is the backdrop for a meeting in Washington this week by a presidential bioethics commission. The meeting was triggered by the government’s apology last fall for federal doctors infecting prisoners and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis 65 years ago.
U.S. officials also acknowledged there had been dozens of similar experiments in the United States — studies that often involved making healthy people sick.
An exhaustive review by The Associated Press of medical journal reports and decades-old press clippings found more than 40 such studies. At best, these were a search for lifesaving treatments; at worst, some amounted to curiosity-satisfying experiments that hurt people but provided no useful results.
Inevitably, they will be compared to the well-known Tuskegee syphilis study. In that episode, U.S. health officials tracked 600 black men in Alabama who already had syphilis but didn’t give them adequate treatment even after penicillin became available.
These studies were worse in at least one respect — they violated the Read more…
Poultry farmers on bird flu alert
“We have asked poultry farmers to report any unusual and large-scale deaths so as to take the necessary measures to confirm if there is any outbreak of bird flu here,” said Dr Y Thirupathaiah, additional director, planning, directorate of animal husbandry.
In 2006, bird flu fear led to losses worth crores of rupees in the state as poultry birds had to be culled in large numbers and eggs were also destroyed.
In case of any signs of bird flu in the state, the serum samples will have to be Read more…
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