Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : SARS - what next? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (579)	6/21/2003 1:44:12 PM
From: Henry Niman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1070

>>I haven't really been following the conspiracy theories about virologists and molecular biologists but I do recognize Don Wiley<< Its one of those google driven conspiracies fed by coincidences (if you look at a million things, you can come up with the 1 in a million coincidences). Just after 9/11 there were some airplane crashes and some bizarre happenings with scientists, so the conspiracy theorists decided it was all an Al Qaeda assassination plot and it wasn't a coincidence that when an airplane crashed and a scientists or two were on board (even tough scientist travel to scientific meetings around the world). Don Wiley fell off a bridge after he had car trouble and hit a barrier (he had been honored at a St Jude annual meeting). I made the mistake of posting that St Jude had a relationship with the Children's Hospital in Argentina where one of its physicians had received anthrax in the mail. It turned out to be coincidences discovered by Google. The anthrax ended up be a contaminant at the lab running the test in Argentina. The medical books from the Florida publisher had a Swiss postmark because the overnight delivery company had a contract with the Swiss. Don Wiley however had done some work on Ebola, although he really was a virologist who studied the immune response to flu. So now whenever his name/death come up, its part of a conspiracy and he was kidnapped (on a one lane bridge under repair) because of his bioterror connections. Some even went as far as to say the he mailed the anthrax and then was killed or committed suicide. They just go on and on (and can't even figure out how to click on a link and find the inventor on a patent because they were "speed reading"). Reading the Free Republic certainly has its entertainment value.

To: Ilaine who wrote (579)	6/26/2003 5:31:28 PM
From: Henry Niman	Respond to of 1070

>>but I do recognize Don Wiley<< Ian Wilson was his post doc and solved the structure of the flu hemaglutinnin in 1980. Tomorrow's Science features Ian's work in HIV and the mechanism of neutralization. Reuters is covering the story (potential HIV vaccine) this afternoon msnbc.com

To: Ilaine who wrote (579)	6/26/2003 5:44:13 PM
From: Henry Niman	Respond to of 1070

Here's the abstract Antibody Domain Exchange Is an Immunological Solution to Carbohydrate Cluster Recognition Daniel A. Calarese,1 Christopher N. Scanlan,2,5 Michael B. Zwick,2 Songpon Deechongkit,3 Yusuke Mimura,5 Renate Kunert,6 Ping Zhu,7 Mark R. Wormald,5 Robyn L. Stanfield,1 Kenneth H. Roux,7 Jeffery W. Kelly,3,4 Pauline M. Rudd,5 Raymond A. Dwek,5 Hermann Katinger,6 Dennis R. Burton,1,2* Ian A. Wilson1,4* Human antibody 2G12 neutralizes a broad range of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) isolates by binding an unusually dense cluster of carbohydrate moieties on the "silent" face of the gp120 envelope glycoprotein. Crystal structures of Fab 2G12 and its complexes with the disaccharide Man1-2Man and with the oligosaccharide Man9GlcNAc2 revealed that two Fabs assemble into an interlocked VH domain-swapped dimer. Further biochemical, biophysical, and mutagenesis data strongly support a Fab-dimerized antibody as the prevalent form that recognizes gp120. The extraordinary configuration of this antibody provides an extended surface, with newly described binding sites, for multivalent interaction with a conserved cluster of oligomannose type sugars on the surface of gp120. The unique interdigitation of Fab domains within an antibody uncovers a previously unappreciated mechanism for high-affinity recognition of carbohydrate or other repeating epitopes on cell or microbial surfaces. 1 Department of Molecular Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, 10550 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA. 2 Department of Immunology, The Scripps Research Institute, 10550 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA. 3 Department of Chemistry, The Scripps Research Institute, 10550 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA. 4 Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, 10550 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA. 5 The Glycobiology Institute, Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QU, UK. 6 Institute for Applied Microbiology, University of Agriculture, Vienna, Austria. 7 Department of Biological Science and Institute of Molecular Biophysics, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA.

To: Ilaine who wrote (579)	6/30/2003 1:31:32 AM
From: Henry Niman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1070

I strongly suspect that the case below is the wife of the 32nd ex- SARS fatality in Toronto. alertnet.org The evidence is as follows: He was initially said to be 50 (changed 49) when he died on May 20. An APB was put out for anyone attending his funeral or burial. He was classified as Toronto's 32nd SARS death (10 days after he died). He was then reclassified as a non-SARS death two days later. His classification and reclassification took place over a week after he was dead and buried (Kane Funeral Home and Armenian Church). He lived near York General. He died on the day the nurses called a meeting over concerns that safety measures had slackened and their warnings about additional SARS cases were not being investigated. At the time there was a nurse who had taken care of health care workers whose husband had "died of SARS". She was in Sunnybrook Women's Hospital "critically ill" with SARS. The 39th SARS fatality and first HCW death had been employed as a nurse at York General. Sunnybrook Women's is affiliated with York General. The nurse was 51 at the time of death. The news report declined to indicate the gender of the 39th victim. If my suspicions are correct, it still seems odd that he was said to have died of SARS, was classified as the 32nd SARS death after an examination of his chart and AUTOPSY, and then was said to have NOT died of SARS. Now a month later his wife has also died and is also initially being classified as a SARS death and the first health care worker to die of SARS in Toronto.