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

To: Ilaine who wrote (689)	8/25/2003 5:26:34 AM
From: Henry Niman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1070

The spin goes on. It hard to believe that the long article below on the Winnipeg lab doesn't tackle or even mention the 750 bp of exact match with SARS CoV. It suggests that the Winnipeg lab has not found the OC43 sequences because it indicates those sequences were found by the BC lab. It also suggests there was some concern about the wording in Friday's press release. If the exact match with SARS CoV is an artifact then there would be no need to call anything SARS-like. OC43 is clearly a cold coronavirus. When I finished reading the article I had the strange feeling that it was somewhat akin read a state controlled mainland China article, circa December 2002 dispelling rumors about a mystery virus, although then it was a mystery and now over 50 SARS CoV isolates have been sequenced, but in Surrey, BC, the mystery remains. Investigative reporters take note. There is a real story here and it was not covered in the story below. >===== Original Message From "Henry L Niman, PhD" <henry_niman@hms.harvard.edu> ===== globeandmail.com SARS-like virus puts lab on edge Life almost normal again at Winnipeg research facility, but vigilance remains

To: Ilaine who wrote (689)	8/26/2003 7:34:58 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 1070

<The New Yorker recently had a good essay about hypochondriasis (hypochondriosis?), which states that historically, an anxious, gloomy temperament has been considered a sign of high intelligence.> CB, careful, or you'll mislead unintelligent people into thinking they are smart because they are gloomy. It's the old correlation isn't causation business. The best test of intelligence isn't a gloominess test, it's an intelligence test. On the other hand, if they mistakenly believe they are smart, at least they won't be gloomy. Or, maybe NewYorker.com has got gloomy customers and is trying to flatter them. Meanwhile, back in February, Gwynne Dyer wrote his article about this new flu and some history on the Black Death. Now rattus rattus is back in the picture and the parallel is closer. <It doesn't really matter how intelligent you are, or how rich you are, or how paranoid you are, or how clean your bathroom is. Those little buggies are out there and it's their job to find you and reproduce. They waft around on wings of irony and fate.> A rich, smart and paranoid person could build an isolated life for themselves. So survival is no doubt possible without having to confront the bug in their body. But for most of us, we are in the biological mill, up close and personal. It's germ warfare. It's the Trojan Horse. One tribe of humans with immunity to sars sends a carrier to another community. That kills of all those who aren't comparably genetically endowed to the carrier. The bug and genetically compatible hosts carry on and expand their domain. It's a cunning trick on the part of the carriers and bugs. Maoris and some of your ancestors suffered greatly from Euro diseases. The human on human violence makes the news, but it's really the bugs which have done the most genocide. The cultural compression at the bottom of the human pyramid of those unable to cope which does the rest. Evolution is not over. Nature is still red in tooth and claw. It just shows up more in breathing problems than tyrannosaurs chomping chimpoids like Jaffas [a sweet]. It also shows up in the digital divide and the cash flows. Mqurice