Category: Diseases


Two Saudi health-care workers now infected by SARS-linked virus

Filed under: Biological Hazard, Disaster Management, Diseases, Diseases, Earth Watch Report, Global Disaster Watch, Medical Research, Science, Uncategorized — 3 Comments
May 16, 2013
Mike Stobbe, The Associated Press
Published Thursday, May 16, 2013 8:18AM EDT
Last Updated Thursday, May 16, 2013 7:52PM EDT

NEW YORK — A deadly new respiratory virus related to SARS has apparently spread from patients to health care workers in eastern Saudi Arabia, health officials said Wednesday.

The Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia told world health officials that two health care workers became ill this month after being exposed to patients with the virus. One is critically ill.

Since September 2012, the World Health Organization has been informed of 40 confirmed cases of the virus, and 20 of the patients have died. The deaths occurred in Britain, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.

Coronavirus, SARS-linked, MERS

A transmission electron micrograph of novel coronavirus particles, colorized in yellow, is shown. (Handout/National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases)

Experts have suggested calling the new virus MERS, for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, but officials have not signed off on that yet.Experts are watching carefully for signs that the deadly virus can spread from person-to-person. Health officials say the virus has likely already spread between people in some circumstances, including hospital patients in France.

The new virus has caused severe respiratory disease in patients, some of them needing mechanical ventilators to help them breathe.

One of the Saudi health care workers is a 45-year-old man who is in critical condition. The other is a 43-year-old woman in stable condition. No other details about their jobs or where they work were released. Health workers were previously infected in a cluster in Jordan, though that was before the new coronavirus had been identified and before any special measures were taken to prevent its spread. That is not the case in Saudi Arabia and officials worry any new spread to health workers could suggest the virus is becoming more transmissible to people.

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WHO Reprimands Saudi Arabia Facility: New Coronavirus Is Spreading Patient-To-Nurse

Two nurses in Saudi Arabia are added to the country’s list of now 30 infected individuals.

By Susan Scutti | May 16, 2013 12:16 PM EDT

Coronavirus, SARS-linked, MERS

(Photo : CDC.gov) Common symptoms of the new coronavirus (nCoV) have been acute, serious respiratory illness with fever, cough, shortness of breath, and breathing difficulties.

Two health care workers, one now in critical condition, caught the new coronavirus (nCoV) from patients in their care at a health care facility in the Eastern part of Saudi Arabia, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports in an update late on Wednesday. WHO has noted that all of the most recent cases are linked to a particular Saudi Arabian health care facility, which continues to remain unidentified in its updates on the disease.

A total of 21 patients, including nine deaths, have been reported in eastern Saudi Arabia from the outbreak since the beginning of May 2013 to date. The Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia is conducting ongoing investigation of the outbreak, while WHO monitors the situation. Experts have suggested calling the new virus MERS, for Middle East respiratory syndrome, but officials have not yet signed off on it, Arab News reports.

“This is the first time health care workers have been diagnosed with (novel coronavirus) infection after exposure to patients,” WHO states of the two new laboratory-confirmed cases. Health care-associated transmission has been observed before with nCoV in Jordan last April, but this is a first for Saudi Arabia.

One of the two new patients is a 45-year-old man who became ill on May 2 and is currently in critical condition. The second patient is a 43-year-old woman with a coexisting health condition, who became ill on May 8 and is in stable condition.

In its update, WHO advises health care facilities providing care for patients with suspected nCoV infection to take appropriate measures to decrease the risk of transmission of the virus to other patients and health care workers. “Health care facilities are reminded of the importance of systematic implementation of infection prevention and control,” notes the United Nations Health Agency.

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Correction: New Virus story

Thursday, May 16, 2013

 

NEW YORK — In a story May 15 about a new SARS-like virus spreading from patients to health care workers in Saudi Arabia, The Associated Press reported erroneously the location of the 20 deaths attributed to the virus. There have been no deaths reported in France and Qatar, only in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Germany and Britain.

The story also said that the spread to health care workers was new. Health workers were previously infected in a cluster in Jordan before the new coronavirus had been identified.

A corrected version of the story is below:

Saudi health workers sickened by SARS-like virus

2 Saudi Arabia health care workers get SARS-like virus; officials consider naming it MERS

By MIKE STOBBE

AP Medical Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — A deadly new respiratory virus related to SARS has apparently spread from patients to health care workers in eastern Saudi Arabia, health officials said Wednesday.

The Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia told world health officials that two health care workers became ill this month after being exposed to patients with the virus. One is critically ill.

Since September 2012, the World Health Organization has been informed of 40 confirmed cases of the virus, and 20 of the patients have died. The deaths occurred in Britain, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.

Experts have suggested calling the new virus MERS, for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, but officials have not signed off on that yet.

Experts are watching carefully for signs that the deadly virus can spread from person-to-person. Health officials say the virus has likely already spread between people in some circumstances, including hospital patients in France.

Read Full Article Here

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International Group Settles on Name for New Coronavirus

Filed under: Biological Hazard, Disaster Management, Diseases, Diseases, Earth Watch Report, Global Disaster Watch, Medical Research, Science — Leave a comment
May 16, 2013

by Martin Enserink on 6 May 2013, 1:05 PM

A virus by any other name? Researchers have recommended a new name for a novel coronavirus (above) first found in the Middle East.
Credit: Rocky Mountain Laboratories, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH

New MERS cases. The MERS coronavirus. Or—if things turn really bad—the MERS pandemic. That’s how the world may soon be talking about the new virus that surfaced in the Arabian Peninsula last summer and that has been rattling health experts since. In a move that may end more than 7 months of confusion, an international group of scientists and public health officials will soon recommend that the new virus be called Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV).

The group plans to publish a paper recommending the new name, says Raoul de Groot, a veterinary virologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who has coordinated the effort. De Groot chairs the Coronavirus Study Group of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), which took the initiative to find a new, widely accepted name. The study group has no power to enforce use of the name, however; it will be up to researchers to decide whether to adopt the moniker.

News of the name comes as Saudi Arabia has reported 13 new cases of the virus, including seven deaths, in just the past 5 days. The wave—more than a month after the last reported case, a 73-year-old man from Abu Dhabi who died in Munich on 26 March—has sparked fresh worries that the virus might start spreading between humans and trigger a global outbreak. As of today, the total reported number of cases is 30, including 18 deaths.

Confusion had reigned over the new name since the virus was first reported by Ali Mohamed Zaki, an Egyptian microbiologist who isolated it in June 2012 from a patient at a hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he worked at the time. Zaki sent the virus to Ron Fouchier’s virology group at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, which characterized it further in a paper published in m Bio in November. Alexander Gorbalenya, a coronavirologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands and ICTV’s vice president, was a co-author, and the group provisionally called the virus HCoV-EMC/2012, short for human coronavirus-Erasmus MC.

The reference to the Dutch lab didn’t sit well with Saudi health officials, who said that Zaki lacked authorization to send the virus to Rotterdam in the first place. Still, most researchers have accepted HCoV-EMC as the name to use. Some have dropped the “EMC,” however, and called the virus simply HCoV, a name that might cause confusion because there are five other human coronaviruses. The World Health Organization (WHO) has adopted the more neutral “novel coronavirus”—abbreviated initially as NCoV but more recently as nCoV—a name that by its very nature was not meant to last.

 

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The World is Biotech’s reasearch lab and Humanity it’s guinea pigs : Roundup ready seeds not working out for you ? No Problem we have seeds that emit even more pesticides.

Filed under: Bioethics, Chemicals, Crimes, Diseases, Environmental, Food Safety, Fraud, Freedom of Information, Fundamental Rights, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO), Genetics, Geo Engineering, Government Overreach, Greed, Health, Human Rights, Hypocrisy, Indoctrination, Legislation, Medical Research, Nutrition, Poisons in Our Foods, Politics, Legislation and Economy News, Science, Secrecy, Special Interests, Wildlife — 2 Comments
May 15, 2013

Biotech’s next big disaster: seeds that emit multiple pesticides

image source

Jon Rappoport
Activist Post

Tom Laskawy, writing at Grist, points out how the next generation of GMOs is following in the track of present disasters:

“…the growing pest and weed problems for GMOs have caused farmers to turn to seeds that are coated with a different pesticide—a neonicotinoid. If that name rings a bell, it’s because these pesticides… have been implicated in the increasing epidemic of bee deaths.

“And that’s aside from the evidence that biotech’s ‘next big thing’ —seeds that emit multiple pesticides—may be doomed to fail. An international team of researchers, including USDA and biotech scientists, found what they termed ‘cross-resistance’ to these pesticides in [predatory] bugs exposed to the next-generation GMO seeds. Evidence, in other words, that GMO seeds are hitting a bug-covered wall.” The seeds don’t knock out the plant pests.

Yet the venerable journal Nature recently urged patience, because just over the next hill, the biotech giants will surely succeed in bringing us better GMO crops.

This reveals an underlying assumption about technology: when scientists discover a new way of doing things, it can never be retracted; it will eventually work well; improvements will come.

That false assumption sustains a tremendous amount of false science, as well as profits, of course, for the companies involved.

“Wait, better developments are being made.”

If scientists can shoot genes into plants, that’s a step that can never be taken back. It’s automatically a sign of progress. To admit defeat would be equivalent to admitting science can be wrong.

This is the insanity we are dealing with.

We’ve seen it in the field of psychiatric drugs, all of which carry heavy toxicity. If you push a researcher up against the wall, where he has to admit problems with the drugs, he’ll say, “But we’re working on next-generation chemicals. It’ll be different. We’re just starting to understand how the brain really works. Be patient. Help is on the way.”

In recent days, we’ve seen the US National Institute of Mental Health and its British counterpart defect from orthodox psychiatry in the interpretation of what a mental disorder is. Some people have taken this as a positive development. But that’s not the case.

The defectors intend to push brain research to new dangerous heights. Even though they have no baseline for “normal brain activity,” they are racing along the track of discovering “abnormal chemical imbalances.” In other words, their better science is no science at all.

They will invent new names for mental disorders, and there will be more drugs to treat patients, and the whole edifice will be founded on lies.

In the field of gene research, scientists are advancing on a road of manipulation of the human genome. This, they say, is yielding one breakthrough after another. New humans, better humans, more talented and healthy and intelligent humans will be the result.

But really, this translates into: we can shift genes around, we can substitute new genes for old genes, we can silence genes and provoke dormant genes to express themselves—therefore, we have to keep doing it. It’s science. We have to expand our work.

No they don’t. In the same way they don’t have to build even more destructive H-bombs, they don’t have to play roulette with the human body and brain.

Just because medical researchers can come up with new chemo drugs that kill cells and destroy immune systems, it doesn’t mean they have to.

Despite failures along every front of GMO-crop production, despite the fact that predictions of higher crop yields and reduced use of pesticides and herbicides have failed to materialize, Monsanto pushes on.

Monsanto lies and pretends their work is an enormous success. Their researchers, many of whom know the catastrophic failure they are dealing with, nevertheless keep going, keep telling themselves that this is science, and therefore it will ultimately succeed.

Translation: The seven billion people of earth are the guinea pigs in a vast corporate experiment.

Technocrats who envision trans-humans, a combine of brain and computerized brain, pin faith on the idea that, since brains can be hooked up to machines, they should be. It’s “scientific progress,” and therefore it has to happen.

All this used to be called scientism, a massive overreach of misplaced faith, but now the word is largely defunct. It was too accurate. It nailed the obsession and showed how crazy it was.

Years ago, I was invited to give a lecture to an atheist group in Los Angeles. The topic was HIV research, because I had written a book about it, AIDS INC.

I described the line of HIV research, and made a detailed case for the fact that researchers had never proved HIV caused a condition that was being called AIDS.

My analysis was met with strong opposition. The group was unhappy.

No problem. But it turned out their unhappiness was based on the notion that I was attacking science itself. And since they believed that’s what I was doing, they were angry because, get this, if I was against science, I must be for God. And they were atheists.

Therefore, I had to be wrong.

Their reaction mirrored 19th century attitudes about the rise of science. Its proponents felt they’d finally found an antidote to religion, and therefore, anyone who criticized science on any terms (e.g, flawed reasoning, bad data, bogus experiments) must be demanding a return to the Church, the Inquisition, and burning at the stake.

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A new study, yet to receive any media attention, reveals the “leukemogenic” properties of the Bt toxin biopesticides engineered into the vast majority of GMO food crops already within the US food supply.

Filed under: Bioethics, Chemicals, Corporate Assault on Our Lives And Our Health, Diseases, Environmental, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO), Genetics, Geo Engineering, Health, Lack Of Transparency, Main Stream Media Manipulations/Lies, Medical Research, Poisons in Our Foods, Secrecy, Special Interests — 3 Comments
May 13, 2013

New Study Links GMO Food To Leukemia

Posted on:

Sunday, May 12th 2013 at 8:00 am

Written By:

Sayer Ji, Founder

New Study Links GMO Food To Leukemia

 

Last September, the causal link between cancer and genetically modified food was confirmed in a French study, the first independent long-term animal feeding study not commissioned by the biotech corporations themselves. The disturbing details can be found here: New Study Finds GM Corn and Roundup Causes Cancer In Rats

Now, a new study published in the Journal of Hematology & Thromboembolic Diseases indicates that the biopesticides engineered into GM crops known as Bacillus Thuringensis (Bt) or Cry-toxins, may also contribute to blood abnormalities from anemia to hematological malignancies (blood cancers) such as leukemia.[i]

A group of scientists from the Department of Genetics and Morphology, Institute of Biological Sciences, University of Brasilia, Brasilia/DF, Brazil set out to test the purported human and environmental biosafety of GM crops, looking particularly at the role that the Bt toxin found within virtually all GM food crops plays on non-target or non-insect animal species.

The research was spurned by the Brazilian Collegiate Board of Directors of the National Sanitary Surveillance Agency (ANVISA), who advocated in 2005 for evaluations of toxicity and pathogenicity of microbiological control agents such as Bt toxins, given that little is known about their toxicological potential in non-target organisms, including humans.

While Bacillus Thurigensis spore-crystals have been used since the late 1960′s in agriculture as a foliar insecticide, it was only after the advent of recombinant DNA biotechnology that these toxin-producing genes (known as delta endotoxins) were first inserted into the plants themselves and released into commercial production in the mid-90′s, making their presence in the US food supply and the bodies of exposed populations ubiquitous.

What the new study revealed is that various binary combinations and doses of Bt toxins are capable of targeting mammalian cells, particularly the erythroid (red blood cell) lineage, resulting in red blood cell changes indicative of significant damage, such as anemia. In addition, the study found that Bt toxins suppressed bone marrow proliferation creating abnormal lymphocyte patterns consistent with some types of leukemia.

The researchers also found that one of the prevailing myths about the selective toxicity of Bt to insects, the target species, no longer holds true:

It has been reported that Cry toxins exert their toxicity when activated at alkaline pH of the digestive tract of susceptible larvae, and, because the physiology of the mammalian digestive system does not allow their activation, and no known specific receptors in mammalian  intestinal cells have been reported, the toxicity these MCAs to mammals  would negligible [8,22,23]. However, our study demonstrated that Bt spore-crystals genetically modified to express individually Cry1Aa, Cry1Ab, Cry1Ac or Cry2A induced hematotoxicity, particularly to the erythroid lineage. This finding corroborates literature that demonstrated that alkali-solubilized  Bt spore-crystals caused in vitro hemolysis in cell lines of rat, mouse, sheep, horse, and human erythrocytes and suggested that the plasma membrane of susceptible cells (erythrocytes, in this case) may be the primary target for these toxins [33]

The study also found:

1) That Cry toxins are capable of exerting their adverse effects when suspended in distilled water, not requiring alkalinization via insect physiology to become activated as formerly believed.

2) That a dose of Cry1Ab as low as 27 mg/kg, their lowest tested dose, was capable of inducing hypochromic anemia in mice – the very toxin has been detected in blood of non-pregnant women, pregnant women and their fetuses in Canada, supposedly exposed through diet.

3) Whereas past reports have found that Bt toxins are generally nontoxic and do not bioaccumulate in fatty tissue or persist in the environment, the new study demonstrated that all Cry toxins tested had a more pronounced effect from 72 hours of exposure onwards, indicating the opposite is true.

4) That high-dose Cry toxin doses caused blood changes indicative of bone marrow damage (damage to “hematopoietic stem cell or bone marrow stroma”).

The authors noted their results “demonstrate leukemogenic activity for other spore-crystals not yet reported in the literature.”

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US invokes emergency act to keep H7N9 flu at bay

Filed under: Bioethics, Biological Hazard, Disaster Management, Diseases, Diseases, Earth Watch Report, Global Disaster Watch, Health, Health And Wellness Report, Medical Research, Pharmaceuticals, Vaccines — 3 Comments
May 9, 2013

Testing is already under way in China <i>(Image: Han Suyuan/Color China Photo/APt)</i>

Testing is already under way in China (Image: Han Suyuan/Color China Photo/APt)

New Scientist

THE US government has declared that H7N9 bird flu “poses a significant potential for a public health emergency”, and has given “emergency use authorisation” for diagnostic kits for the virus. This means tests can be used that haven’t gone through the usual lengthy approval process by the US Food and Drug Administration.

They are right to be concerned. H7N9 could be a tough adversary: New Scientist has learned that it provokes a weaker immune response than most flu, making vaccines hard to produce.

Although H7N9 is not, so far, transmissible between humans, it does cause severe disease in people, is easier to catch than other bird flu strains, and may need only a few mutations to go pandemic. The UK has already given doctors instructions on when to test people for H7N9, and how to manage any with the virus.

The US’s emergency authorisation will allow the use of a kit that looks for flu genes using a polymerase chain reaction test, which has been made specific for H7N9. The kit has had preliminary tests but would normally need more exhaustive tests to be approved. Innovative new diagnostics should eventually be authorised too, says Charles Chiu of the University of California in San Francisco.

This kind of fast, high-throughput screening for pandemic flu, possibly at borders, might allow early cases to be treated with antiviral drugs, potentially slowing the spread of the virus while vaccines are made.

The next emergency authorisation is likely to be for immune-stimulating chemicals called adjuvants to put in those vaccines. These were used in vaccines in Europe and Canada during the 2009 pandemic, but adjuvants suitable for flu are not currently approved in the US.

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CDC: Current China Bird Flu Strain Can’t Cause Pandemic

Pedestrians wearing medical masks walk on the street outside National Taiwan University Hospital in Taipei, April 26, 2013. A 53-year-old Taiwan businessman contracted the H7N9 strain of bird flu while travelling in China, the first reported case outside of mainland China.

Pedestrians wearing medical masks walk on the street outside National Taiwan University Hospital in Taipei, April 26, 2013. A 53-year-old Taiwan businessman contracted the H7N9 strain of bird flu while travelling in China, the first reported case outside of mainland China.

 Reuters

May 06, 2013

NEW YORK — The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the current strain of bird flu that is causing illness and deaths in China cannot spark a pandemic in its current form – but he added that there is no guarantee it will not mutate and cause a serious pandemic.

In an exclusive interview at the Reuters Health Summit in New York, Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC, said more than 2,000 people have been in contact with infected individuals, and only a handful have become ill.

Virtually all of the rest have had direct contact with poultry, the identified cause of the virus.

FILE - Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, is shown at the agency's headquarters, Sept. 3, 2009.
FILE – Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, is shown at the agency’s headquarters, Sept. 3, 2009.

“This particular virus is not going to cause a pandemic because it doesn’t spread person-to-person,” Frieden said. “But all it takes is a bit of mutation for it be able to go person-to-person.  I cannot say with certainty whether that will happen tomorrow, within 10 years or never.”

The new strain of bird flu known as H7N9, which began infecting people in February, has so far sickened at least 127 people and killed 27. According to the latest CDC estimates, the flu kills about 20 percent of the people it infects.

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Over 5000 children’s products contain toxic chemicals linked to cancer, hormone disruption and reproductive problems, including the toxic metals, cadmium, mercury and antimony, as well as phthalates and solvents

Filed under: Chemicals, Corporate Assault on Our Lives And Our Health, Diseases, Health, Health And Wellness Report, Medical Research — Leave a comment
May 9, 2013

Cadmium, mercury and phthalates—oh my!

Posted May 1, 2013 by Kathleen Schuler, MPH

 

. A new report by the Washington Toxics Coalition and Safer States reveals the results of manufacturer reporting to the Washington State Department of Ecology.

Makers of kids’ products reported using 41 of the 66 chemicals identified by WA Ecology as a concern for children’s health. Major manufacturers who reported using the chemicals in their products include Walmart, Gap, Gymboree, Hallmark, H & M and others. They use these chemicals in an array of kids’ products, including clothing, footwear, toys, games, jewelry, accessories, baby products, furniture, bedding, arts and crafts supplies and personal care products. Besides exposing kids in the products themselves, some of these chemicals, for example toxic flame retardants, build up in the environment and in the food we eat.

Examples of product categories reported to contain toxic chemicals include:

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Animal and Human DNA in Your Vaccine?!

Filed under: Bioethics, Diseases, Genetics, Health, Health And Wellness Report, Medical Research, Pharmaceuticals, Vaccines — 5 Comments
May 8, 2013
 

iHealthTube iHealthTube

Published on May 7, 2013

http://www.ihealthtube.com http://www.facebook.com/ihealthtube
Journalist Liam Scheff has done research into the vaccine system in the United States. He also has an interesting family history in the practice. He discusses some of the things vaccines still contain and how the premise behind vaccines is flawed.

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Rumor Alert !! Sex superbug: As deadly as AIDS virus hits Hawaii is FALSE!

Filed under: Bioethics, Diseases, Health, Health And Wellness Report, Holistic Health, Medical Research, Pharmaceuticals — Leave a comment
May 7, 2013

Image Source

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Rumor: New ‘sex superbug’ found in Hawaii

The Associated Press, which first reported the story about the “sex superbug,” has since withdrawn its story.

FALSE

AP first reported on apparent ‘sex superbug,’ but has since withdrawn story

The rumor began on May 1, when The Associated Press printed a tiny note from Honolulu. State health officials had reportedly confirmed two cases of H041, a drug-resistant gonorrhea. As the AP reported, the “superbug” had first been discovered in Japan in 2011. Others quickly pounced on the story. AP’s competitor UPI trotted out a naturopathic physician to give them the “this might be a lot worse than AIDS” scare quote. And British tabloid The Sun called the bug a “global killer” even though, as it later pointed out, it hadn’t actually killed anyone yet.

But AP then published this story, withdrawing the previous story about the “sex superbug,” saying “The Hawaii State Department of Health says the two cases are a different strain of the disease, and no cases of the new strain have been confirmed.” Had H041 actually been found on the island, it would have been as big a deal as the AP and others said it was. As NBC News points out, that particular strain of gonorrhea is resistant to ceftriaxone, “the last-resort treatment for the sexually transmitted infection.”

But it wasn’t H041. The two cases in Hawaii, as the AP later corrected and as NBC discovered, were actually a different strain, H11S8, that’s resistant to a different antibiotic. As of now, H041 hasn’t been seen since 2009, when it was revealed that a Japanese sex worker was infected.

 

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Sex Superbug, Antibiotic-Resistant

Gonorrhea, Is Not ‘Worse Than AIDS,’ Experts Say

Posted: 05/07/2013 10:41 am EDT

Gonorrhea Superbug

By: Rachael Rettner, MyHealthNewsDaily Senior Writer
Published: 05/06/2013 05:51 PM EDT on MyHealthNewsDaily

Antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea is a serious public health issue, but comparing the illness to AIDS, as a recent article did, is misleading, experts say.

A recent CNBC article with the headline “Sex Superbug Could Be ‘Worse Than AIDS’” quoted Alan Christianson, a naturopathic doctor, as saying that an antibiotic-resistant strain of the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea “might be a lot worse than AIDS in the short run because the bacteria is more aggressive and will affect more people quickly.”

However, some experts called the comparison hyperbolic.

“I disagree with the general comparison,” said Dr. Bruce Hirsch, an attending physician in infectious diseases at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y.

“The rate of complications from gonorrhea in terms of systemic problems is so much lower than the rate of complications from untreated AIDS infection,” Hirsch said.

The CNBC article says that this particular strain of gonorrhea “might put someone into septic shock and death in a matter of days.” But Hirsch said that the rate of life-threatening complications, such as sepsis, from gonorrhea, is about 1 percent, while the rate of death from untreated AIDS is 98 percent.

 

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Conspiracy Fact : Chinese researchers for created new strains of influenza virus in veterinary laboratory : Where will the madness stop??

Filed under: Bioethics, Biological Hazard, Diseases, Diseases, Earth Watch Report, Genetics, Global Disaster Watch, Medical Research, Vaccines — 1 Comment
May 5, 2013

‘Appalling irresponsibility’: Senior scientists attack Chinese researchers for creating new strains of influenza virus in veterinary laboratory

 

 

Experts warn of danger that the new viral strains created by mixing bird-flu virus with human influenza could escape from the laboratory to cause a global pandemic killing millions of people.

 

Steve Connor Author Biography

Thursday 02 May 2013

Sha 

 

 

 

Senior scientists have criticised the “appalling irresponsibility” of researchers in China who have deliberately created new strains of influenza virus in a veterinary laboratory.

 

 

They warned there is a danger that the new viral strains created by mixing bird-flu virus with human influenza could escape from the laboratory to cause a global pandemic killing millions of people.

Lord May of Oxford, a former government chief scientist and past president of the Royal Society, denounced the study published today in the journal Science as doing nothing to further the understanding and prevention of flu pandemics.

“They claim they are doing this to help develop vaccines and such like. In fact the real reason is that they are driven by blind ambition with no common sense whatsoever,” Lord May told The Independent.

“The record of containment in labs like this is not reassuring. They are taking it upon themselves to create human-to-human transmission of very dangerous viruses. It’s appallingly irresponsible,” he said.

The controversial study into viral mixing was carried out by a team led by Professor Hualan Chen, director of China’s National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory at Harbin Veterinary Research Institute.

Professor Chen and her colleagues deliberately mixed the H5N1 bird-flu virus, which is highly lethal but not easily transmitted between people, with a 2009 strain of H1N1 flu virus, which is very infectious to humans.

When flu viruses come together by infecting the same cell they can swap genetic material and produce “hybrids” through the re-assortment of genes. The researchers were trying to emulate what happens in nature when animals such as pigs are co-infected with two different strains of virus, Professor Chen said.

 

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Epidemic fears see bird flu doctors halt research

 

Saturday 21 January 2012

inShare4

 

Influenza experts have agreed to a two-month voluntary ban on research into a highly dangerous strain of bird-flu virus because of fears that it may escape from their laboratories to cause a global human epidemic.

In a joint letter to the journals Science and Nature, 39 researchers from around the world emphasise that their laboratories are safe and secure but they nevertheless acknowledge that there is grave public concern about the accidental or deliberate release of an “airborne” strain of H5N1 avian influenza which could be transmitted easily between people.

“We realise that organisations and governments around the world need time to find the best solutions for opportunities and challenges that stem from the work. To provide time for these discussions, we have agreed on a voluntary pause of 60 days on any research involving highly pathogenic influenza H5N1 viruses leading to the generation of viruses that are more transmissible in mammals,” the letter states.

Last month, the US Government announced that it had asked Science and Nature to withhold key details of two studies carried out in the US and the Netherlands where scientists mutated the H5N1 bird-flu strain into a form that could be transmitted easily between laboratory ferrets – the standard animal model for human influenza.

 

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Alarm as Dutch lab creates highly contagious killer flu

 

 

Fear of terrorism as university prepares to publish key details

 

Steve Connor Author Biography

Tuesday 20 December 2011

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A deadly strain of bird flu with the potential to infect and kill millions of people has been created in a laboratory by European scientists – who now want to publish full details of how they did it.

 

The discovery has prompted fears within the US Government that the knowledge will fall into the hands of terrorists wanting to use it as a bio-weapon of mass destruction.

Some scientists are questioning whether the research should ever have been undertaken in a university laboratory, instead of at a military facility.

The US Government is now taking advice on whether the information is too dangerous to be published.

To see the graphic: The last outbreak – A deadly virus even before the latest twist

“The fear is that if you create something this deadly and it goes into a global pandemic, the mortality and cost to the world could be massive,” a senior scientific adviser to the US Government told The Independent, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“The worst-case scenario here is worse than anything you can imagine.”

For the first time the researchers have been able to mutate the H5N1 strain of avian influenza so that it can be transmitted easily through the air in coughs and sneezes. Until now, it was thought that H5N1 bird flu could only be transmitted between humans via very close physical contact.

Dutch scientists carried out the controversial research to discover how easy it was to genetically mutate H5N1 into a highly infectious “airborne” strain of human flu. They believe that the knowledge gained will be vital for the development of new vaccines and drugs.

But critics say the scientists have endangered the world by creating a highly dangerous form of flu which could escape from the laboratory – as well as opening a Pandora’s box for fanatical terrorists wishing to make a bio-weapon.

The H5N1 strain of avian influenza has killed hundreds of millions of birds since it first appeared in 1996, but has so far infected only about 600 people who came into direct contact with infected poultry.

What makes H5N1 so dangerous, though, is that it has killed about 60 per cent of those it has infected, making it one of the most lethal known forms of influenza in modern history – a deadliness moderated only by its inability (so far) to spread easily through airborne water droplets.

 

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Leading scientists condemn decision to continue controversial research into deadly H5N1 bird-flu virus

 

 

Research has already led to the creation of a mutated form of avian flu that can spread easily between mammals – including humans

 

Steve Connor Author Biography

Wednesday 23 January 2013

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Leading scientists have condemned a decision by flu researchers to continue their controversial research into the deadly H5N1 bird-flu virus, which has already led to the creation of a mutated form of avian flu that can spread easily between mammals – including humans.

 

Forty of the world’s most prominent flu researchers have decided to lift their voluntary moratorium on studies into the airborne transmission of the H5N1 strain of bird-flu, which they imposed upon themselves last January following public outrage over the work.

They said that the benefits of the research in preventing and dealing with a future flu pandemic outweigh the risks of an accidental leak of the mutant virus from a laboratory or the deliberate attempt to create deadly strains of flu by terrorists or rogue governments.

However, other leading scientists vehemently denounced the decision on the grounds that it would be more dangerous to proceed with the research than to continue with the moratorium, claiming that there has been little discussion of the decision outside the flu-research community.

Professor Lord May, a former government chief scientist and past president of the Royal Society, said the moratorium should be continued because there are two possible downsides to research that deliberately aims at making the H5N1 bird-flu virus more infectious to humans.

“As this research becomes more widely known and disseminated, there is the opportunity for evil people to pervert it. My other concern is the statistics of containment are not what they ought to be,” Lord May told The Independent.

“The dangers of going ahead with the research outweigh the benefits of what may emerge. As I look at it, on the balance of probabilities, going ahead and lifting the moratorium is more dangerous than not going ahead,” he said.

 

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Researchers have discovered the mechanism behind one of the Ebola virus’ most dangerous attributes: its ability to disarm the adaptive immune system.

Filed under: Biological Hazard, Disaster Management, Discoveries, Diseases, Diseases, Earth Watch Report, Global Disaster Watch, Health, Medical Research — 1 Comment
May 4, 2013

 

 

Public release date: 2-May-2013

Contact: Jim Kelly
jpkelly@utmb.edu
409-772-8791
University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston

Ebola’s secret weapon revealed

 

University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston scientists determined that Ebola short-circuits the immune system using proteins that work together to shut down cellular signaling related to interferon. Disruption of this activity, the researchers found, allows Ebola to prevent the full development of dendritic cells that would otherwise trigger an immune response to the virus.

“Dendritic cells typically undergo a process called ‘maturation’ when they’re infected by a virus — they change shape and present antigens on their surface that tell T-cells to attack that particular virus, thus generating an adaptive immune response,” said UTMB professor Alexander Bukreyev, senior author of a paper on the discovery now online in the Journal of Virology. “But Ebola prevents dendritic-cell maturation and produces a severe infection without an effective adaptive immune response. We found that its ability to do this depends on several specific regions of two different proteins.”

Bukreyev’s research group made the discovery after a series of procedures that started with a clone of the Ebola Zaire virus strain. Working under maximum-containment conditions in a biosafety level 4 facility in UTMB’s Galveston National Laboratory, the team introduced mutations into the virus’ genetic code at four locations thought to generate proteins that affected immune response.

They then infected human dendritic cells with each of the resulting new strains and compared the results with those produced by unmutated Ebola Zaire. Each of the four new viruses, they found, was unable to suppress dendritic-cell maturation.

“We saw two very interesting things,” Bukreyev said. “First, that these mutations restore maturation of dendritic cells very effectively, and second, that a mutation in even one of these genetic domains makes the virus unable to suppress maturation. That means that the virus needs multiple combined effects in order to undermine the immune system in this way.”

Ebola’s ability to evade the human immune response is one of the factors that accounts for its high mortality rate — up to 90 percent in humans — and the notoriety that it gained after its first appearance in Zaire in 1976, in an outbreak that killed 280 people. Zaire — now the Democratic Republic of the Congo — is the home country of Ndongala Lubaki, lead author on the paper and a postdoctoral fellow at UTMB.

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Other authors of the Journal of Virology paper include postdoctoral fellow Phillipp Ilinykh, assistant research lab director Collette Pietzsch, research scientist Bersabeh Tigabu, assistant professor Alexander Freiberg and Richard Koup of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Vaccine Research Center. This research was supported by the John Sealy Memorial Endowment Fund and the James W. McLaughlin Endowment.

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