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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elpolvo who wrote (7353)	9/25/2002 1:35:05 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

The flu virus turns cunning to outsmart the immune system By Lorraine Fraser in London September 23 2002 The influenza virus has developed a "nasty trick" - the ability to circumvent the human body's main defence against the disease, raising the prospect of a deadly global outbreak. Scientists investigating 1997's Hong Kong flu have discovered it learnt how to bypass the immune system, and new flus have since been found with similar abilities. "This is a really nasty trick that this virus has learnt: to bypass all the innate mechanisms that cells have for shutting down the virus," said Robert Webster, who led the study at St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. "It is the first time this mechanism has shown up and we wonder if it was not a similar mechanism that made the 1918 influenza virus so enormously pathogenic." The 1918 virus killed 50 million people. Dr Klaus Stohr, the leader of the World Health Organisation's global flu program, called the 1997 outbreak "the last warning from nature" that the world faces a pandemic similar to 1918. The Hong Kong virus, which killed six people, did not transmit easily from person to person, but other flu viruses with similar anti-immune abilities have since been identified. Dr Stohr said: "Imagine if that [Hong Kong] virus obtained a little additional capacity to be freely transmitted in humans - a large proportion of the population of the world would presumably have died." The new research, published in Nature Medicine, found the Hong Kong virus was able to avoid interferons and other vital chemical factors that are released as a response to infection. A single mutation on a flu virus gene was linked with the change. "The parents of the 1997 virus are still present in southern China," Dr Webster said. "The fact that it is still there, and it has this ability to pull off new tricks all the time, is a threat." It takes at least six months to produce a new flu vaccine but a fresh pandemic could spread across the world in days. The only hope, Dr Webster said, was to stockpile anti-flu drugs, but even America has baulked at the cost. Dr Stohr warned that the last pandemic was 34 years ago, while the average time between pandemics was about 28 years. "We are beyond the odds now - it is a question of when." The Telegraph, London smh.com.au

To: elpolvo who wrote (7353)	9/25/2002 4:26:50 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

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