RE: " The centre also said that before the patient fell ill, he had used chopsticks to try to catch a rat."
This guy is a danger not only to himself but to society. I feel sorry for him and the pain he must be going through, but how many times does he have to get SARS before he changes his ways?
RE: "Tests on rats caught in the man's apartment in the Panyu Lijiang Garden showed they had coronavirus. Hong Kong medical experts say the Sars virus is close in form to the coronavirus found in rats." The comment that the patient's sequence is close to the coronavirus sequence found in rats in the patient's apartment raises several new issues. The first brings back the potential for contamination. "
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This has significant consequences, if they determine rats are spreading sars.
You would probably know this better than me, but apparently the Spanish Flu stopped spreading in London after homes, made out of a certain loose material used in London, burned down. Apparently, rats were spreading the Spanish Flu, but when the homes burned down, they replaced the homes with different material that minimized rat contamination and the Spanish Flu ended. But this contradicts another article that said the burning of homes fueled an outbreak (but they didn't specify in which city) - because people's immune systems were down after dealing with the fire and thus susceptable to the flu, as they generally are after a disaster.
How come superspreaders spread it so far, while others don't seem to spread it too much? It fortunately isn't spreading as fast as a flu outbreak.
How far away are scientists from a vaccine? Maybe they'll finally find a cure to the common cold too, in the process.
On another note, there was a meeting with some MIT folks the other week, and they discussed the explosion of the biotech arena. 16,000 proteins recently defined, genetics, etc. It's all impressive and exciting. Several attendees were looking at this from the angle of the technology needed to deliver solutions.
I work in the communications industry and we have been approached by a biotech company interested in our communications technology for various uses. We aren't focused on their type of communication needs, but just happen to have infrastructure they are interested in bundling with their solution. We have never focused on the medical market, but my initial take is the entire space needs improving in many ways - beyond even our scope.
Love working in communications, because we bump into so many different problems and needs for interesting solutions that one could never envision. We'll be making a business case assessment this month on whether to move forward with the biotech firm or not. I personally find biotech and certain medical areas exciting emerging markets. But our startup needs to get better informed as to whom are the leading emerging biotech companies in this market, who is headed where, who does what, where are the gaps, and most importantly what's wrong with what's out there today and why can't we and the other biotech company that approached us simply work in conjunction with what's out there already, before we make any decision. One of our investors is a medical device entrepreneur who sold his company to Stryker so he'll probably have some good insight into this, and how all the pieces could fit together, if we decide to pursue this particular market.
Regards,
Amy J |
