Scientists recreate 1918 Flu Virus

[diaglo]

It always freaked me out that there was mustard gas stored outside my home town, and the anthrax stored not far from that but Bird flu is an unexpected tweak on bio-fun
I mean terror

their is mustard gas stored all over the US from WW I. there was some on the base were i lived. and there was place to get rid of some of the old ordinance nearby but it caused an uproar about hazards to the local community.
edit: and as far as anthrax goes. it is natural in the environment.

 

[diaglo]

y'all are missing some good horsesh....http://videocast.nih.gov/

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

So, if chicken soup is supposed to be good for the flu, shouldn't chickens be really good about not getting the flu?

 

[ssampier]

Why am I getting 12 Monkeys flashbacks?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114746/

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

Wasn't this the basic idea behind "Jurassic Park"? Yeah, "...and a certain degree of immunity is believed to persist today."

A certain degree of immunity to tyrannosaurus rex attacks?

 

[Nuclear Platypus]

So, if chicken soup is supposed to be good for the flu, shouldn't chickens be really good about not getting the flu?

Nah. They have to drink each other's bath water.

Sheesh. We're already running low on the vaccinations tho not as bad as last year. Its not like its difficult to prevent - cleanliness, handwashing, Vitamin C, etc. Maybe its proof of the Gaia Theory as the planet is trying to fight off an infection known as humanity.

 

[was]

-The only problem with many scientists, is that they always ask: could we do this?
For most people with common sense, the next question is: should we do this?
-For example, I read about some guy in New Jersey who is trying to create a miniature black hole under 'controlled' settings in his lab. Yeah, that's a smart idea.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I only wandered by just recently to this thread. I wanted to chime in to note another alarming factoid about the 1918 Spanish influenza.

The scientists published the entire genetic sequence of the virus in the science magazine Nature. So, while having the virus samples is a pretty scary thing imagine being stolen someday. The entire genetic code of the virus is freely available to the global public.

 

[Staffan]

I only wandered by just recently to this thread. I wanted to chime in to note another alarming factoid about the 1918 Spanish influenza.

The scientists published the entire genetic sequence of the virus in the science magazine Nature. So, while having the virus samples is a pretty scary thing imagine being stolen someday. The entire genetic code of the virus is freely available to the global public.

As I understand it, that particular flu virus isn't a very big danger nowadays. See, we are the descendants of people who survived the 1918 flu, so we supposedly have much better resistance to it than the people who died in it. Natural selection in action.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

As I understand it, that particular flu virus isn't a very big danger nowadays. See, we are the descendants of people who survived the 1918 flu, so we supposedly have much better resistance to it than the people who died in it. Natural selection in action.

I don't buy that totally. We haven't been exposed to the virus to have developed a resistance. Resistance to viruses isn't passed on genetically necessarily.

For instance, I read that the scientists exposed a group of heavily quantantined mice to the 1918 flu virus and more of the mice died from exposure than any virus <i>ever tested before</i>. These mice didn't have any innate resistance to the virus because their ancestors survived 1918...