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[Why does this article mention the sociological factoid that in 1918, some Americans hypothesized that the influenza pandemic was actually biowarfare perpetrated by the Kaiser’s Germany through the introduction of Bayer aspirin? Mentioning this popular mistake may reassure the majority of readers that a new pandemic would be just as natural as that of 1918; devastating, but no more sinister in its origins than the quirk of viral evolution that burned through the West in WWI.
On the other hand, a minority will recall that Bayer later became a robust contributor to the Nazi programs of forced internment by gradually escalated “anti-terrorism” policies, enslavement by forced internment, murder by slavery (in which slaves are not fed), and depopulation by murder. Though the infected of 1918 had yet to see the first swastika, it seems they were not so far off base in their belief that a corporate entity from a Capitalistic, authoritarian, Protestant society might commit mass murder off the battlefield. Like Monsanto, Bayer is now among the major players in an apparent bid to crash the world food supply by using genetically patented monocrops to destroy seed diversity. The Board members and executives of these corporations are well aware (as the stockholders ought to be) that this represents the potential starvation of billions of kids and gentlemen and ladies: seed diversity is all that protects our food sources from sudden extinction by new pathogens and environmental shifts.
American public figures and corporations would collaborate with the Nazis, to the eventual increase of their own power in the U.S. These included the then-active portions of the Rockefeller, Harriman, and Bush families. Combined with 9-11, this is enough to make a fellow nervous about The Man’s propensity to initiate a kill-off in pursuit of a die-off. Mike Ruppert recently said the following at the “Petrocollapse” conference in New York City:
We are witnessing government response to Peak Oil now. In my earlier presentation I have made it clear that that response will include only measures which protect the financial elites and major corporations. They include:
1. Rationing
2. More Coal and Nuclear – Emphasis on Fisher-Tropsch Coal-to-Liquids Conversion.
3. Suspended Environmental and Drilling Restrictions
4. Protection of Critical Infrastructure
5. Strengthening and Reinforcing Domestic Military Operations – Suspension of Posse Comitatus
6. Suspension and Relaxation of Labor and Minimum Wage Laws.
7. Changing and Tightening the Bankruptcy Laws Allowing Fewer Distressed Consumers to Discharge Debts.
8. Allowing and Facilitating Population Reduction through Famine and Disease.
9. Strengthening and Giving More Power to FEMA.
10. Destroying Demand Through Economic Collapse and Allocating Scarce Resources – by Force if Necessary – to Protect the Interests of the Wealthiest Communities and Interests in the Country.
There is a chance that the murders of prominent microbiologists in recent years (covered by FTW in “Biowarfare: CDC Issues Plan for Mass Smallpox Vaccinations; Questions Raised on MEHPA and Microbiologist Deaths ,” by Joe Taglieri and Michael C. Ruppert; and “A Career In Microbiology Can Be Harmful To Your Health: Death Toll Mounting As Connections to Dyncorp, Hadron, Promis Software and Disease Research Emerge,” by Michael Davidson and Michael C. Ruppert) are connected to the genetic engineering of an influenza pathogen to be used for depopulation in the shadow of Peak Oil. There is also a chance that no such program involving their work succeeded or even existed; that the new avian flu is natural in origin; that it has not and will not mutate its way to disastrous new levels of transmission, infectivity and virulence. – JAH]
Witness to 1918 flu: 'Death was there all the time'
98-year-old man recalls pandemic that killed millions
By Kelley Colihan
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/conditions/10/07/1918.flu.witness/index.html
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
FRAMINGHAM, Massachusetts (CNN) -- Kenneth Crotty was 11 years old when the "great flu" hit his neighborhood in Framingham, outside Boston.
"It was scary, because every morning when you got up, you asked, 'Who died during the night?' You know death was there all the time."
The 1918 pandemic is thought to have killed anywhere from 20 million to 100 million people around the world. Researchers recently re-created the virus to study it for clues on how to fight the current strain of bird flu, which threatens to become the next great flu pandemic.
As an altar boy, Crotty said he served in more than 30 Masses for the dead, some for flu victims some for those who died on the battlefields of World War I, which was in its final weeks.
"They'd have those monstrous big candles on the first six aisles on the body that was drawn down, and I remember the heartbreak I felt when I saw that person lugged down the center aisle, down the steps packed into a small truck," he said.
At 98, Crotty resides in a nursing home in his hometown in Massachusetts. In 1918, he lived there with his parents and four sisters.
He didn't get sick, but two of his sisters came down with the flu. His mother kept him downstairs, while his ill sisters stayed upstairs until they were well enough to move about.
Five neighbors on his street of about 20 houses died during the season of death, he recalled.
"People were very leery of each other. And when we went out, we wore a mask over our noses and mouths," he said.
Crotty said people also covered their shirts with holy medals to "ward off the evil of this terrible disease."
Historian John Barry, author of "The Great Influenza," said the disease "killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years."
The worst-hit U.S. cities were Philadelphia, New York and Boston.
Barry said vigilantes patrolled the streets of Albuquerque, New Mexico, making people wear their masks.
President Woodrow Wilson continued sending troop ships to Europe, something Barry describes as "floating coffins."
Treatment was limited in 1918 -- Crotty said people tried folk medicine, prayer, anything.
"There were no antibiotics, there was just hope that you'd get through, that fate was kind enough that it wouldn't hit you or yours," he said.
Bayer aspirin was just hitting the market. But because it was a German company, and Germany was a foe in World War I, many Americans distrusted it and even believed the new product was a form of germ warfare.
A theory, Barry notes, that was even suggested by U.S. government officials. He said the pandemic caused the United States largely to "grind to a stop."
"Fear drove everybody inside," he said. Across the United States, "60 percent absentee rates" and empty city streets were common, Barry said.
He said the climate of fear was brought on by a mistrust of government officials and the press.
"People could see while they were being told on the one hand that it's ordinary influenza, on the other hand they are seeing their spouse die in 24 hours or less, bleeding from their eyes, ears, nose and mouth, turning so dark that people thought it was the black death," Barry says said. "People knew that they were being lied to; they knew that this was not ordinary influenza."
Nearly as quickly as it struck, the 1918 flu seemed to disappear.
Did it mutate? Or did people on Earth now have antibodies?
Leading scientists say both likely happened. Scientists say weakened strains of the 1918 virus have shown up since then. And as people are exposed to flu strains, they develop resistance to them.
Pretext for more martial law: bird flu
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/100605Chin/100605chin.html
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
George W. Bush and his administration announced yesterday that they intend to dispatch federal troops to enforce quarantines in the event of an alleged bird flu outbreak, raising the immediate prospect that in the not-distant future, soldiers will cordon off American communities suspected of flu outbreaks.
This followed a closed-door session in which the US Congress was propagandized about a bird flu pandemic scenario by the Bush administration’s Health and Human Services secretary Michael Leavitt. This session “scared the hell” out of Senator Harry Reid, and other congressional leaders, who are not only poised to grant Bush authority to call in troops when he chooses, but are in the process of introducing a new bill calling for the creation of a “flu pandemic coordinator” within the White House---placing yet more power directly into the hands of Bush and future presidents.
In response, Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and director of its National Center for Disaster Preparedness, blasted Bush’s “extraordinarily Draconian measure”, and said it plainly:
“The translation of this is martial law in the United States.”
The United States has been under martial law since the Bush administration orchestrated 9/11. Having sown fear throughout the world, further crippling the minds of (already deluded) masses, the administration has responded to calls to be “made safe” from “terrorists” with the blueprint for martial law and a full US police state, the Patriot Act, and increasing militarization and worldwide war and terrorism.
If the unprecedented federal militarization of New Orleans and Gulf states did not provided ample enough grotesque proof that the Bush administration intends to seize every opportunity to impose a police state under any pretext---natural and real, as well as manufactured---the writing on the wall is now nightmarishly clear.
A mushrooming energy crisis has arrived. Bush’s war-for-oil operations are failing. The US economy is on the brink of tipping over.
The Bush administration must now reach even deeper, more often, into its criminal trick bag, for new pretexts and justifications for its deepening criminal actions and “extraordinary Draconian measures”. More fake “terrorism”. More force (in response to resistance and opposition). More Supreme Court appointments ready to erase what is left of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
More manufactured pandemics. More militarization, more guns, coming to a neighborhood near you.
This administration, and the compliant and complicit US Congress that bows to its every lie and whim, knows that the coming post-Peak oil world will necessitate a police state, in order to preserve the hides---and loot---of its own elites.
Bush: Military may have to help if bird flu breaks out President wants Congress to discuss how to use armed forces
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/04/bush.avianflu/index.html
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush says the possibility of an avian flu pandemic is among the reasons he wants Congress to give him the power to use the nation's military in law enforcement roles in the United States.
"I'm concerned about what an avian flu outbreak could mean for the United States and the world," he told reporters during a Rose Garden news conference on Tuesday.
Such an event would raise difficult questions, such as how a quarantine might be enforced, he said.
"One option is the use of a military that's able to plan and move," he said. "So that's why I put it on the table. I think it's an important debate for Congress to have."
People who catch the worst strain of avian flu can die of viral pneumonia and acute respiratory distress, according to mayoclinic.com.
The disease has killed tens of millions of birds in Asia.
Last week, the U.N.'s health agency, the World Health Organization, sought to ease fears that the disease could kill as many as 150 million people worldwide.
"We're not going to know how lethal the next pandemic is going to be until the pandemic begins," WHO influenza spokesman Dick Thompson said, according to The Associated Press.
The consequences of an outbreak in the United States need to be addressed before catastrophe strikes, Bush said.
The president said that he sees things differently than he did as governor of Texas. "I didn't want the president telling me how to be the commander in chief of the Texas Guard," he said. "But Congress needs to take a look at circumstances that may need to vest the capacity of the president to move beyond that debate. And one such catastrophe or one such challenge could be an avian flu outbreak."
Should avian flu mutate and gain the ability to spread easily from human to human, world leaders and scientists would need rapid access to accurate information to be able to stem its spread, he said.
"We need to know, on a real-time basis, the facts, so the world's scientific community could analyze the facts," he said.
Bush said he has spoken with Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, about work toward a vaccine, but that means of prevention remains a distant hope.
"I take this issue very seriously," Bush said. "I'm not predicting an outbreak, but just suggesting to you we ought to be thinking about it, and we are."
Absent an effective vaccine, public health officials likely would try to stem the disease's spread by isolating people who had been exposed to it. Such a move could require the military, he said.
"I think the president ought to have all options on the table," Bush said, then corrected himself, "all assets on the table -- to be able to deal with something this significant."
The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 bans the military from participating in police-type activity on U.S. soil.
Bush began discussing the possibility of changing the law last month, in the aftermath of the government's sluggish response to civil unrest following Hurricane Katrina.
"I want there to be a robust discussion about the best way for the federal government, in certain extreme circumstances, to be able to rally assets for the good of the people," he told reporters September 26.
Gene Healy, a senior editor at the conservative Cato Institute, said Bush would risk undermining "a fundamental principle of American law" by tinkering with the act, which does not hinder the military's ability to respond to a crisis.
"What it does is set a high bar for the use of federal troops in a policing role," he wrote in a commentary on the group's Web site. "That reflects America's traditional distrust of using standing armies to enforce order at home, a distrust that's well-justified."
Healy said soldiers are not trained as police officers, and putting them in a civilian law enforcement role "can result in serious collateral damage to American life and liberty."
Last month, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush "wants to make sure that we learn the lessons from Hurricane Katrina," including the use of the military in "a severe, catastrophic-type event."
"The Department of Defense would assume the responsibility for the situation, and come in with an overwhelming amount of resources and assets, to help stabilize the situation," McClellan said.
The World Health Organization has reported 116 cases of avian flu in humans, all of them in Asia. More than half of them have been fatal, it said.
On Thursday, the Senate added $4 billion to a Pentagon spending bill to head off the threat of an outbreak of avian flu among humans. The bulk of the money -- $3 billion -- would be used to stockpile Tamiflu, an antiviral drug that has proved effective against the H5N1 virus -- the strain blamed for six deaths in Indonesia last week.
U.S. health agencies have about 2 million doses of Tamiflu, enough to treat about 1 percent of the population. The money added by the Senate would build that stockpile to cover about 50 percent of the population.
CNN's Deirdre Walsh contributed to this report. Associated Press contributed to this report.
Martial Law and the Avian Flu Pandemic
By Michel Chossudovsky
October 4, 2005
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code
=CHO20051004&articleId=1041
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
The threat of the avian flu pandemic is real. Until recently, national governments and the WHO have dismissed the seriousness of the crisis. The public has been misinformed. The issue has been barely mentioned by the media.
Why all of a sudden is avian flu on the presidential agenda?
The issue was placed on the agenda of the President's White House Press Conference (October 4, 2005). There was nothing spontaneous in the White House journalist's question to President Bush, which explicitly pointed to a role for the country's "defense assets" in the case of a pandemic.
We are not dealing with an off-the-cuff statement. Both the question as well as Bush's response calling for a greater role of the Military, had been prepared in advance:
QUESTION: Mr. President, you've been thinking a lot about pandemic flu and the risks in the United States if that should occur.
I was wondering, Secretary Leavitt has said that first responders in the states and local governments are not prepared for something like that. To what extent are you concerned about that after Katrina and Rita?
And is that one of the reasons you're interested in the idea of using defense assets to respond to something as broad and long-lasting as a flu might be?
BUSH: Yes. Thank you for the question.
I am concerned about avian flu. I'm concerned about what an avian flu outbreak could mean for the United States and the world.
BUSH: I have thought through the scenarios of what an avian flu outbreak could mean. I tried to get a better handle on what the decision-making process would be by reading Mr. Barry's book on the influenza outbreak in 1918. I would recommend it.
The policy decisions for a president in dealing with an avian flu outbreak are difficult.
One example: If we had an outbreak somewhere in the United States, do we not then quarantine that part of the country? And how do you, then, enforce a quarantine?
It's one thing to shut down airplanes. It's another thing to prevent people from coming in to get exposed to the avian flu.
BUSH: And who best to be able to effect a quarantine?
One option is the use of a military that's able to plan and move. So that's why I put it on the table. I think it's an important debate for Congress to have.
I noticed the other day, evidently, some governors didn't like it. I understand that. I was the commander in chief of the National Guard and proudly so. And, frankly, I didn't want the president telling me how to be the commander in chief of the Texas Guard.
But Congress needs to take a look at circumstances that may need to vest the capacity of the president to move beyond that debate. And one such catastrophe or one such challenge could be an avian flu outbreak.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
BUSH: Wait a minute, this is an important subject.
Secondly, during my meetings at the United Nations, not only did I speak about it publicly, I spoke about it privately to as many leaders as I could find, about the need for there to be awareness, one, of the issue and two, reporting -- rapid reporting to WHO, so that we can deal with a potential pandemic.
The reporting needs to be not only on the birds that have fallen ill, but also on tracing the capacity of the virus to go from bird to person to person. That's when it gets dangerous: when it goes bird, person, person.
BUSH: And we need to know on a real-time basis as quickly as possible the facts so that the world scientific community can analyze the facts and begin to deal with it.
Obviously, the best way to deal with a pandemic is to isolate it and keep it isolated in the region in which it begins.
As you know, there's been a lot of reporting of different flocks that have fallen ill with the H5N1 virus. And we've also got some cases of the virus being transmitted to a person, and we're watching very carefully.
Thirdly, the development of a vaccine.
BUSH: I've spent time with Tony Fauci on the subject.
Obviously, it would be helpful if we had a breakthrough in the capacity to develop a vaccine that would enable us to feel comfortable here at home, that not only would first responders be able to be vaccinated, but as many Americans as possible, and people around the world.
But, unfortunately, we're just not that far down the manufacturing process. And there's a spray, as you know, that can maybe help arrest the spread of the disease, which is in relatively limited supply.
So one of the issues is how do we encourage the manufacturing capacity of the country, and maybe the world, to be prepared to deal with the outbreak of a pandemic?
BUSH: In other words, can we surge enough production to be able to help deal with the issue?
I take this issue very seriously, and I appreciate you bringing it to our attention.
The people of the country ought to rest assured that we're doing everything we can. We're watching it. We're careful. We're in communications with the world.
I'm not predicting an outbreak. I'm just suggesting to you that we better be thinking about it. And we are. And we're more than thinking about it, we're trying to put plans in place.
And one of the plans -- back to where your original question came -- was, you know, if we need to take some significant action, how best to do so. And I think the president ought to have all options on the table to understand what the consequences are -- all assets on the table, not options -- assets on the table to be able to deal with something this significant. (White House Press Conference, 4 October, 2005, italics added)
Militarization of Public Health
The statement of President Bush suggests the enactment of Martial Law in the case of an avian flu outbreak. Martial Law could also be established, using the pretext of an outbreak of avian flu in foreign countries and its potential impacts on the US.
In other words, the Military rather than the country's civilian health authorities would be put in charge.
A decision to put the Military in charge of a public health emergency spells disaster, as evidenced by the intervention of the Military in hurricane relief in Louisiana and Southern Texas. (See http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=newsHighlights&newsId=29)
The pandemic is being presented to public opinion as an issue of National Security, with a view to triggering the militarization of civilian institutions in blatant violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.
The statement of President Bush with regard to the avian flu pandemic bears a marked resemblance to an earlier statement, also at a Press Conference, in the wake of Hurricane Rita, during which the President and Commander in Chief called for the Military to become the "lead agency" in disaster relief.
BUSH ".....The other question, of course, I asked, was, is there a circumstance in which the Department of Defense becomes the lead agency. Clearly, in the case of a terrorist attack, that would be the case, but is there a natural disaster which -- of a certain size that would then enable the Defense Department to become the lead agency in coordinating and leading the response effort. That's going to be a very important consideration for Congress to think about.
(Press Conference, 25 Sept 2005:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle
&code=BUS20050925&articleId=1004)
The hidden agenda consists in using the threat of a pandemic and/or the plight of a natural disaster as a pretext to establish military rule, under the facade of a "functioning democracy".
What Bush's statements suggest is that Congress should enact legislation which will, in practice suspend Constituional government and allow the Military to intervene in civilian affairs in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. The latter, however, while still on the books, is in practice already defunct.
(See Frank Morales at: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MOR309A.html).
Legislation inherited from the Clinton administration, not to mention the post 9/11 Patriot Acts I and II, "blurs the line between military and civilian roles". It allows the military to intervene in judicial and law enforcement activities even in the absence of an emergency situation.
In 1996, legislation was passed which allowed the military to intervene in the case of a national emergency (e.g.. a terrorist attack). In 1999, Clinton's Defense Authorization Act (DAA) extended those powers (under the 1996 legislation) by creating an "exception" to the Posse Comitatus Act, which permits the military to be involved in civilian affairs "regardless of whether there is an emergency".
(See ACLU at:
http://www.aclu.org/NationalSecurity/NationalSecurity.cfm?ID=8683&c=24)
Despite this 1999 "exception" to the Posse Comitatus Act", which effectively invalidates it, both the Pentagon and Homeland Security, have been actively lobbying Congress for the outright repeal of the 1878 legislation.
(See Michel Chossudovsky, at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO504B.html)
To achieve public support for the Military to become "the lead agency", the Bush administration is not only resorting to the usual counter-terrorism justification.
Other supportive criteria are being developed to justify military rule. In this regard, at the height of Hurricane Katrina, meetings were held under the auspices of US Northern Command, involving the participation of Bush, Rumsfeld and Chertoff, to examine the role of the military in disaster relief. (See:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=
viewArticle&code=CHO20050924&articleId=991)
Spiraling Defense Budget
According to the Wall Street Journal (Oct 1, 2005), the Bush administration plans to ask Congress for an estimated $6-10 billion "to stockpile vaccines and antiviral medications as part of its plans to prepare the U.S. for a possible flu pandemic"
This commitment of the administration has not, however, resulted in an expansion of the nation's public health budget. In fact quite the opposite. Consistent with its role as "lead agency", more than half of the money earmarked for the program is slated to be handed over to the Pentagon.
An amendment to the defense-spending bill in the Senate would earmark $3.9 billion "to prepare the U.S. for a flu pandemic".
In other words, what we are dealing with is a process of militarization of the civilian budget. Civilian social sector budgets are now being transferred to the Department of Defense. The money for a public health program is controlled by the Department of Defense, under the rules of DoD procurement.
"The US Senate voted yesterday to provide $4 billion for antiviral drugs and other measures to prepare for a feared influenza pandemic, but whether the measure would clear Congress was uncertain.
The Senate attached the measure to a $440 billion defense-spending bill for 2006, according to the Associated Press (AP). But the House included no flu money in its version of the defense bill, and a key senator said he would try to keep the funds out of the House-Senate compromise version. The Senate is expected to vote on the overall bill next week.
Almost $3.1 billion of the money would be used to stockpile the antiviral drug oseltamivir (Tamiflu), and the rest would go for global flu surveillance, development of vaccines, and state and local preparedness, according to a Reuters report. The government currently has enough oseltamivir to treat a few million people, with a goal of acquiring enough to treat 20 million"
(CIDRAP, http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/panflu/news/sep3005avian.html)
Multibillion Financial Bonanza for the BioTech Conglomerates
The threat of the avian flu pandemic will result in multibillion dollar earnings for the pharmaceutical and biotech industry.
In this regard, a number of major pharmaceutical companies including GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis, California based Chiron Corp, BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc, Novavax and Wave Biotech, Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche Holding, have positioned themselves in the procurement of vaccines in case of an avian 'flu outbreak. Maryland-based biotechnology company MedImmune which produces "an inhaled flu vaccine" has also positioned itself to develop a vaccine against the H5N1 avian flu.
(Although it has no expertise in the avian flu virus, one of the major actors in the vaccine business, on contract to the Pentagon, is Bioport, a company which is part owned by the Carlyle Group, which is closely linked to the Bush Cabinet with Bush Senior on its board of directors.)
Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is the author of a America's "War on Terrorism", Global Research, September 2005.
Experts Unlock Clues to Spread of 1918 Flu Virus
“The scientists painstakingly traced the genetic sequence, synthesized the [1918 flu] virus using tools of molecular biology, and infected mice and human lung cells with it in a secure laboratory at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.”
The New York Times
October 6, 2005
By Gina Kolata
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/06/health/06flu.html?th&emc=th
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
The 1918 influenza virus, the cause of one of history's most deadly epidemics, has been reconstructed and found to be a bird flu that jumped directly to humans, two teams of federal and university scientists announced yesterday.
It was the culmination of work that began a decade ago and involved fishing tiny fragments of the 1918 virus from snippets of lung tissue from two soldiers and an Alaskan woman who died in the 1918 pandemic. The soldiers' tissue had been saved in an Army pathology warehouse, and the woman had been buried in permanently frozen ground.
"This is huge, huge, huge," said John Oxford, a professor of virology at St. Bartholomew's and the Royal London Hospital who was not part of the research team. "It's a huge breakthrough to be able to put a searchlight on a virus that killed 50 million people. I can't think of anything bigger that's happened in virology for many years."
The scientists painstakingly traced the genetic sequence, synthesized the virus using tools of molecular biology, and infected mice and human lung cells with it in a secure laboratory at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The research is being published in the journals Nature and Science.
The findings, the scientists say, reveal a small number of genetic changes that may explain why this virus was so lethal. It is significantly different from flu viruses that caused the more recent pandemics of 1957 and 1968. Those viruses were not bird flu viruses but instead were human flu viruses that picked up a few genetic elements of bird flu.
The research also confirms the legitimacy of worries about the bird flu viruses, called H5N1, that are emerging in Asia. Since 1997, bird flocks in 11 countries have been decimated by flu outbreaks. So far nearly all the people infected - more than 100, including more than 60 who died - contracted the sickness directly from birds. However, there has been little transmission between people.
The 1918 virus, in contrast, was highly infectious, and in recent weeks the fear that a transformation of one of the current bird flus could make it infectious in humans has prompted politicians of both major parties to scramble to demonstrate that they are taking the threat of an avian flu outbreak seriously.
Bush administration officials have been talking about pandemic flu preparedness for years, and they say they will soon release a pandemic flu plan, in the works for more than a year. Senate Democrats say that the administration is not doing enough, and they are writing their own bills that call for more spending and coordination.
President Bush this week asked the leaders of the world's top vaccine manufacturers - Chiron, Sanofi-Aventis, Wyeth, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck - to come to the White House on Friday to discuss preparations for pandemic flu, said people with knowledge of the meeting who insisted on anonymity because the White House has not yet announced the meeting.
The research on the 1918 virus is directly applicable to current concerns, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a joint statement. "The new studies could have an immediate impact by helping scientists focus on detecting changes in the evolving H5N1 virus that might make widespread transmission among humans more likely," they said.
The bird flu viruses now prevalent share some of the crucial genetic changes that occurred in the 1918 flu, scientists said, but not all. The scientists suspect that with the 1918 flu, changes in just 25 to 30 out of about 4,400 amino acids in the viral proteins turned the virus into a killer. The new work also reveals that 1918 virus acts much differently from ordinary human flu viruses. It infects cells deep in the lungs of mice and infects lung cells, like the cells lining air sacs, that would normally be impervious to flu. And while other human flu viruses do not kill mice, this one, like today's bird influenzas, does.
Other scientists said the new work was immensely important, leading the way to identifying dangerous viruses before it is too late and to find ways to disable them.
The 1918 flu, which killed as many as 50 million people worldwide, showed how terrible that disease can be. It had been "like a dark angel hovering over us," said Dr. Oxford, the virology professor at St. Bartholomew's. The virus spread and killed with terrifying speed, preferentially striking the young and the healthy. Alfred W. Crosby, author of "American's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918," said that it "killed more humans than any other disease in a similar duration in the history of the world."
The research, and its publication, raised concerns about whether scientists should actually resurrect this killer that vanished from the earth nearly a century ago.
"It is something we take seriously," said Dr. Fauci, whose institute helped pay for the work. The work was extensively reviewed, he added, and the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity was asked to decide whether the results should be made public. The board "voted unanimously that the benefits outweighed the risk that it would be used in a nefarious manner," Dr. Fauci said.
Others are not convinced.
Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers, said he had serious concerns about the reconstruction of the virus. "There is a risk verging on inevitability, of accidental release of the virus; there is also a risk of deliberate release of the virus." And the 1918 flu virus, Dr. Ebright added, "is perhaps the most effective bioweapons agent ever known."
But Dr. D. A. Henderson, a resident scholar at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Biosecurity and a leading expert on bioterrorism, said he agreed with the decision to reconstruct the virus and publish its genetic sequence. "This work is of the greatest importance, and it is very important that it be published," he said.
The story of the resurrection of the 1918 flu began in 1995. Until then, scientists had thought the task hopeless. Viruses had not been discovered in 1918, so no one had isolated and saved the one that caused the flu.
But Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, chief of the molecular pathology department at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, had an idea for finding that ancient virus. He recalled that his institute had a warehouse of autopsy tissue, established by President Lincoln.
Dr. Taubenberger investigated and found tissue from two soldiers who died of the 1918 flu, one in Massachusetts, one on Long Island. The tissue was snips of lung soaked in formalin and encased in little blocks of wax. In that tissue was the virus, broken and degraded, but there, untouched for nearly 80 years.
Then Dr. Taubenberger received a third sample, from a woman who had died in Brevig, Alaska, when the flu swept through her village, killing 72 adults and leaving just five. The dead were buried in a mass grave in the permafrost. A retired pathologist, Johan Hultin, hearing of Dr. Taubenberger's quest, had traveled from his home in San Francisco at his own expense. He dug up the grave with the villagers' permission, extracted the woman's still frozen lung tissue and sent it to Dr. Taubenberger.
Dr. Taubenberger and his colleagues spent nearly a decade carefully extracting and piecing together the viral genes, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Along the way, they published findings that they and others used to try to understand the 1918 flu, but until now they had published only the sequences of five of the eight genes that make up the virus. The last three, which make up half of the virus's length, are published today in their paper in Nature.
In August, Terrence M. Tumpey of the Centers for Disease Control and his colleagues used the viral genome to reconstruct the 1918 virus, and they wondered what would happen if they infected mice and if they infected tissue from human lungs. And, they asked, would the virus remain as lethal if they switched some of its genes with genes from today's influenza viruses?
The scientists took great precautions, Dr. Gerberding said, using special labs that were designed to protect the researchers and prevent the spread of the viruses. "We have erred on the side of caution at every step of the process," she added.
And now, the scientists say, the work is starting to unmask that virus's secrets.
In gene-swapping experiments, the scientists found that small substitutions weakened the reconstructed virus so that it could no longer replicate in the lungs of mice, kill animals, or attach itself to human lung cells in the lab.
The ultimate goal, Dr. Taubenberger says, is to make a checklist of changes to look for in the bird viruses. "Now you have all these viruses going around and we don't know, is it going to adapt to humans? Is it going to cause a pandemic? We don't understand the rules," he said. "There is a lot of science to go."
Gardiner Harris contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
From frozen Alaska to the lab: a virus 39,000 times more virulent than flu
· Tight security to prevent 'select agent' escaping
· Publication of its genetic code raises fears of misuse
Ian Sample, science correspondent
Thursday October 6, 2005
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1585716,00.html
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Only a handful of scientists have security clearance to access the laboratory at 1600 Clifton Road in Atlanta, Georgia, home to the US government's Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Before entering, they must pull on a protective hood, don breathing apparatus and pass through electronic fingerprint and retina scanners to prove their identity.
Inside the lab lies a batch of a virus, designated a "select agent", that more than justifies the extreme level of security. Resurrected nearly 90 years after it spread around the globe, leaving an estimated 50 million people dead, it is a replica of the 1918 Spanish flu virus.
The recreation of the virus, which was driven by an urge to unravel why the 1918 pandemic was so devastating, has raised as many fears as it has hopes. While the researchers argue the work will hugely improve protection against natural flu viruses, critics say there is a real danger the virus will escape, with potentially disastrous consequences.
The recreation process was laborious. Scientists collected fragments of the virus from lung tissue taken from victims at the time and preserved in formalin or, in one case, isolated from the lungs of a woman victim whose body had later become frozen in the Alaskan permafrost. Using the fragments, they painstakingly pieced together and read the complete genetic code before using the sequence to rebuild the virus from scratch.
By injecting it into mice, the team led by Dr Jeffery Taubenberger at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Maryland was able to establish just how ferociously effective it was, compared with more common flu strains. All the mice infected died within a few days; all infected with contemporary strains recovered. "I didn't expect it to be as lethal as it was," Dr Terrence Tumpey, a scientist on the project from the US Centres of Disease Control and Prevention, told the journal Nature.
By creating flu strains with only certain parts of the 1918 virus, researchers investigated which of the eight genes that make up the virus were most responsible for its virulence. They discovered that rather than being caused by one or two genes, they all played a part, which suggests that the virus had completely adapted to cause disease in humans, something they say could happen again with avian flu strains.
In a second paper, published in Nature today, Dr Taubenberger and colleagues at the US Centres for Disease Control and Protection analysed the genetic make-up of the recreated virus. Surprisingly, they found it had no similarities to any of the human viruses in circulation, suggesting that the Spanish strain had jumped from birds to humans, and didn't mix with a human virus first, as had been believed.
The finding that Spanish flu came straight from birds has raised concerns among scientists. Previously, a pandemic was only thought likely if an avian strain merged with a human flu virus. "For me, it raises even more concern than I already had about the pending potential of a flu pandemic," said Professor Ronald Atlas, co-director of the centre for the deterrence of biowarfare and bioterrorism at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. "It looks as though an avian strain evolved in 1918 and that led to the deadly outbreak, in much the same way as we're now seeing the Asian avian flu strains evolve."
According to Dr Taubenberger, knowing what mutations gave rise to the 1918 Spanish flu virus will help scientists check viruses to work out which, if any, are evolving to the point where a pandemic is possible. The H5N1 strain of bird flu in Asia is already mutating to make it more suited to humans, he said.
Despite the new insights given by the project, many scientists were alarmed at the recreation itself and particularly that the full genetic sequence was to be made public on an online genetic database.
"Assuming this is a replicant of the 1918 flu strain, if it got out, it could initiate disease in humans and given the work they've done, one had to say it would be infectious," said Prof Atlas.
Viruses have escaped from high-security labs before. During the recent Sars outbreak the virus escaped at least twice, once in Taiwan and once in Singapore, when researchers became contaminated.
Other scientists warned that the 1918 virus's genetic code could easily be misused. Such has been the pace of progress in genetic science that companies now build genes to order for customers who send in details of sequences they want.
"If the genetic sequence is out there on a database, then that is a clear security risk," said Dr John Wood, a virologist at the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control, in Potters Bar.
According to Dr Julie Gerberding, director of the US Centres for Disease Control and Protection, a pandemic is unlikely even if the virus escapes because of most people's natural immunities and the availability of antiviral drugs and flu vaccines.
Publication of the research still raises questions about the powers of academic journals who take ultimate responsibility for publishing the papers, said Dr Wood. "That is some responsibility," he said.
The US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity concluded at an emergency meeting last week to discuss the possible publication of the papers that their benefits outweighed their risks.
FAQ: 1918 flu pandemic
Why was the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic so lethal?
The worst pandemic in human history, the 1918 strain killed an estimated 50 million people. Because flu viruses were unknown at the time, no isolates of the pathogen were made, making it impossible for scientists to study. Scientists believe the virus was originally found only in birds but jumped to humans and evolved to become very infectious
Whom did the 1918 flu virus kill?
Most flu viruses kill the very young, the old and the infirm. But the Spanish flu was unusual in striking young, fit people extremely hard. Even with good healthcare, up to one third of those who picked up the infection died, many within days
What is a select agent?
Its designation as a 'select agent' by US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention puts it on a list of controlled pathogens and toxins including ricin, smallpox virus, anthrax and ebola
How secure is the virus?
It is held in a biosafety level 3 enhanced laboratory, kept at a negative pressure to prevent air escaping. Workers must wear protective clothing, breathing apparatus and gain entry via fingerprint and retina scans
Bird flu jumps transmission barrier in humans
Dubai By Tom Clifford, Assistant Editor
October 1, 2005
http://gulfnews.com/Articles/WorldNF.asp?ArticleID=184637
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Bird flu has broken the transmission barrier and jumped from human to human, according to the World Health Organisation. Most cases have been bird to human but transmission between people increases fears of a global pandemic.
The acknowledgement came on a day when the organisation had to backtrack on the number of potential deaths forecast from a bird flu pandemic created by widespread human-to-human infection.
Dr David Nabarro said on Thursday, less than one day into his new role as the UN coordinator for global readiness against an outbreak, that measures taken by the world today would determine whether bird flu ended up killing five million or as many as 150 million people.
The figure of 150 million deaths was quickly played down by the WHO yesterday.
"There is obvious confusion, and I think that has to be straightened out. I don't think you will hear Dr Nabarro say the same sort of thing again," WHO influenza spokesman Dick Thompson told a news briefing.
The UN health agency said it has warned countries to prepare for a death toll of up to 7.4 million.
The 1918-19 'Spanish flu' outbreak, the most lethal flu pandemic so far recorded, claimed 50 million lives, far more than the 15 million killed in the First World War.
But the flu has jumped the barrier of human-to-human transmission.
"There have been four, maybe five cases of humans getting it from other humans," Thompson told Gulf News from the organisation's Geneva headquarters.
"All of these have been in Asia. But it is important to note that it was not passed on to more humans. The chain ended at those four or five who caught it."
The world has coped with pandemics before, Thompson said.
Seasonal flu normally kills up to 500,000 in any year.
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[Wait a minute! “Only a small portion of Gulf production will be lost for good”??? Before the hurricanes the world was using every drop of production and still falling short. Sure, we have seen some temporary demand drop in the months where both air conditioning and heating is turned off. But this is a truly disastrous revelation as we hover at Peak and wait for the winter heating season to start. Also of note: other revelations have shown that even under the best of circumstances much of the Gulf’s American production won’t be repaired for a decade. We don’t have a decade. And the largest producer in the gulf, Mexico, shut down production with Hurricane Stan which hit the Yucatan about ten days ago.
Remember, once a refinery is shut down it takes 2-3 weeks to restart it, assuming there has been no damage. I have seen no reports on what damage Stan did to Mexican production. Has anyone else?
-- MCR]
Hurricanes destroyed 109 oil platforms: US government
Oct 04 2005
Agence France-Presse
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/04102005/323/hurricanes-destroyed-109-oil-platforms-government.html
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed 109 oil platforms and five drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, but only a small portion of production will be lost for good, the US government said.
Rita accounted for most of the damage in a region that ordinarily produces nearly one-third of US crude oil imports, Interior Secretary Gale Norton said in presenting a preliminary assessment report.
Rita destroyed 63 platforms and one drilling rig when it tore through the region on September 24, she said. Katrina destroyed 46 platforms and four drilling rigs when it hit the Gulf at the end of August.
Katrina also caused extensive damage to another 20 platforms and nine drilling rigs. Rita seriously damaged 30 platforms and 10 drilling rigs.
"The two hurricanes coming so close together really illustrate how much of our offshore production was affected," Norton told the CNBC network.
"We had altogether, with both of the hurricanes, about 2,900 platforms that were in the path of the hurricanes," she said.
"We have no official estimate of the dollar value of the damage and the amount that it will cost to repair those facilities, but it will clearly be in the billions of dollars."
In advance of the hurricanes, crude oil production ground to a halt as Gulf sites were evacuated.
A total of 342 platforms remain evacuated, roughly 40 percent of the manned sites in the Gulf, Norton said.
As a result, 90 percent of crude production and 72 percent of natural gas output is paralysed, she said.
But Norton also stressed that only one of the damaged platforms was built after federal construction standards were tightened in 1988.
The ones that were destroyed were nearing the end of their lives. "As a result, only a very small percentage of production is expected to be permanently lost," she said in a statement.
"Despite such intense winds and powerful waves offshore, we experienced no loss of life or significant spills from any offshore well on the outer continental shelf," Norton added.
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Witness to 1918 flu: 'Death was there all the time'