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Medical Forum / General / General / October 2005"Nobody expects the Spanish Influenza!"
Are they going to develop a vaccine for this "recovered" virus? Viruses aren't life, just simple genetic strands with protein coats. Do they really need to be preserved under laboratory conditions or frozen in order to be recovered? Is there any reason why remains dug up from a graveyard (with or without mischief in mind -- remains are often moved for land development, etc.) couldn't result in exposure to this virus and a new pandemic? With 20 million victims and easy access to death records, it wouldn't be too difficult to find them. And that was back before the advent of commercial plane travel. Imagine the infection rate today. Not exactly 12 Monkeys, but one hell of a problem. I don't know what would be left of the remains...I would guess that in many cases bones and powder, the latter easily airborn, hence easily inhaled by anyone carelessly handling them. They weren't so big on airtight coffins back then, so anaerobic putrifaction wouldn't be that common... Mark Adkins msadkins04@yahoo.com >Are they going to develop a vaccine for this "recovered" virus? No need. They're comparing it to the bird flu to see what they have in common. >Viruses aren't life, just simple genetic strands with protein coats. >Do they really need to be preserved under laboratory conditions or >frozen in order to be recovered? Just because they aren't alive doesn't mean they're indestructible. They're strings of nucleic acids and they do break down over time. Influenza is less fragile than, say, HIV, but it still degrades. -- David Wright :: alphabeta at prodigy.net These are my opinions only, but they're almost always correct. "If you can't say something nice, then sit next to me." -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth > >Viruses aren't life, just simple genetic strands with protein coats. > >Do they really need to be preserved under laboratory conditions or [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > They're strings of nucleic acids and they do break down over time. > Influenza is less fragile than, say, HIV, but it still degrades. Maybe not fast enough. See: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=1 671114&dopt=Citation http://www.crystalinks.com/mum.html In the first instance, the survival was after considerable soil mixing. In the second instance, the viral remains were considerable but partial, but that was after more than 1,000 years. Can you cite a study demonstrating that influenza virus is unrecoverable and non-virulent after less than 100 years interment in dry graves in (say) a desert area? >> >Viruses aren't life, just simple genetic strands with protein coats. >> >Do they really need to be preserved under laboratory conditions or [quoted text clipped - 18 lines] >unrecoverable and non-virulent after less than 100 years interment in >dry graves in (say) a desert area? Not offhand, but so what? It wasn't my idea to go after it in people buried in permafrost. -- David Wright :: alphabeta at prodigy.net These are my opinions only, but they're almost always correct. "If you can't say something nice, then sit next to me." -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth > >> >Viruses aren't life, just simple genetic strands with protein coats. > >> >Do they really need to be preserved under laboratory conditions or [quoted text clipped - 26 lines] > "If you can't say something nice, then sit next to me." > -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth I didn't say permafrost. I *suppose* that under some usages of the term "desert" might refer to permafrost, but there are other kinds of deserts, and I wasn't, strictly speaking, restricting the question to deserts -- merely specifying them as a kind of exemplar of first preference. Mark Adkins msadkins04@yahoo.com |
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