Did leak from a laboratory cause swine flu pandemic?
Same strain of influenza was released by accident three decades ago
EPA
A scientist holds anti-viral reagent. Nearly 6,000 Britons have been infected with the current strain of H1N1
It has swept across the world killing at least 300 people and infecting thousands more. Yet the swine flu pandemic might not have happened had it not been for the accidental release of the same strain of influenza virus from a research laboratory in the late 1970s, according to a new study.
Scientists investigating the genetic make-up of flu viruses have concluded there is a high probability that the H1N1 strain of influenza "A" behind the current pandemic might never have been re-introduced into the human population were it not for an accidental leak from a laboratory working on the same strain in 1977.
Yesterday, the Department of Health announced a further surge in the number of cases in Britain with another 1,604 confirmed over the weekend, and the death of a girl in Birmingham with underlying medical complications; the third death in Britain from swine flu-related problems.
Almost 6,000 Britons have now been infected with the influenza "A" (H1N1) strain of swine flu. But two medical researchers believe that this strain of the virus had been extinct in the human population for more than 20 years until it was unwittingly reintroduced by scientists working in a research lab somewhere in the world, leading to a pandemic in 1977 that began in Russia and China.
"Careful study of the genetic origin of the [1977] virus showed that it was closely related to a 1950 strain, but dissimilar to influenza 'A' (H1N1) strains from both 1947 and 1957. This finding suggested that the 1977 outbreak strain had been preserved since 1950. The re-emergence was probably an accidental release from a laboratory source," according to the study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Shanta Zimmer and Donald Burke from the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania said that influenza "A" (H1N1) disappeared completely from humans after a pandemic of another strain of flu in 1957. H1N1 was not detected in annual surveillance until an outbreak of H1N1 swine flu in January 1976 at a US Army base in Fort Dix, New Jersey.
This outbreak affected 230 military personnel, killing one person, but it was successfully contained and was almost certainly caused by the direct transmission of swine flu from pigs. Nevertheless, the global anxiety caused by the Fort Dix outbreak led to a surge in research into H1N1 around the world, with experiments on frozen samples of the virus stored in labs since the 1950s, Dr Zimmer said.
"I would imagine that most labs researching into influenza would have had the 1950s strain. We cannot actually pinpoint which lab had it or accidentally released it, but the re-emergence of H1N1 in 1977 made it potentially a man-made pandemic," she said.
"It's a reminder that we need to be continually vigilant in terms of laboratory procedures. The identical virus in the current pandemic would not have occurred because a component of it comes from the H1N1 strain of 1977 – but it doesn't mean to say that we wouldn't have had another one causing a pandemic," she added.
One of the most likely routes for the release of the 1950s virus is that laboratory workers became infected accidentally and then infected families and friends, Dr Zimmer explained. After the 1977 pandemic, the H1N1 strain of flu re-appeared annually as seasonal flu but this year it underwent a radical genetic change to become another pandemic strain.
Professor John Oxford of the Royal London Hospital said that the accidental release of the 1950s strain of H1N1 in 1977 is entirely plausible, but it may have been a good thing as it would have given many older people alive today some measure of immunity to the current pandemic. "We can look upon it now as a stroke of good luck," he said.
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Comments
We have seen huge efforts by Governments across the world in dealing with the EFFECTS mild Mexican swine fever. It's surely time for the focus to shift to dealing with the root CAUSE of these new flu threats: The cruel, ethically wrong, and ultimately dangerous to human health, factory farming systems.
to nature to clean pests on the planet like us!
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It is public knowledge he had access to anthrax as part of his work on germ warfare "defenses".
It is entirely reasonable that flu could also be used in germ warfare, hence Fort Detrick having stockpiles of various flu strains, and experimenting with flu strain hybrids, as they do with anthrax.
You could easily have personnel going between Fort Dix and Fort Detrick.
THIS TIME HOWEVER, I DO NOT BELIEVE THIS IS ANYMORE THAN COMMON FLU, IT ISN'T SWINE, FLU, DOG FLU OR ANY OTHER TYPE OF ANIMAL FLU. PEOPLE ARE DYING FROM FLU ALL THE TIME DUE TO EXISTING CONTRIBUTING FACTORS LIKE, HEART PROBLEMS, CANCER, ASTHMA, DISABILITIES, OLD AGE, IMMUNE SYSTEM PROBLEMS AND WEATHER CONDITIONS, BUT THEY AREN'T REPORTED. THIS IS YET ANOTHER SMOKE SCREEN TO COVER UP WHAT IS GOING ON IN GOVERNMENTS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD AND TO KEEP PEOPLE IN FEAR. AMERICA HAS BEEN DOING THIS FOR YEARS AND NOW THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT IS DOING IT TOO. i SUGGEST YOU READ BETWEEN THE LINES OF EVERYTHING THAT IS REPORTED INCLUDING THE SO CALLED STATISTICS.
DON'T BE AFRAID, IT IS REALLY JUST FLU, YOU WILL FEEL PRETTY DREADFUL FOR A FEW DAYS AND THEN IT WILL CLEAR UP.
Every year in the USA, about 30,000 people die from influenza infection, yes every year.
How on earth can you describe 300 deaths worldwide as a pandemic?
Yes, sure, people die from regular influenza in the thousands each year.
That does not mean that this strain will not mutate and cause many, many more deaths. One only has to look at history to see the precursors: 1918, 1968...
But of course it's much more responsible and worthwhile to just leave comments like yours belittling the work that medical professionals do.
I think I'll take my chances with their intelligence, research and balanced conclusions than your pathetic, childish, nihilist drivel.
Professionals like Baxter who ship off vaccinations that contain H1N1 designed to contaminate? Baxter said it was an accident of course...
Or the professionals that scoff at the medical voices that have said that they see genetic manipulation on this particular strain? How the early versions of this flu bore elements not just of swine flu and several very respected and now silenced scientists came out and said to the world that they were suspicious.
Roche and Baxter are making a fortune out of this, our own government bought 5 million doses of the very nasty and dangerous Tamilflu and are giving it out willy nilly despite there being serious contra-indications and side effects including increased self harm on young people and those suffering with depression and other mental ailments.
The research mainly came from US Military labs, does it not strike you odd that several years ago the US military leaned on our home secretary to allow the violation of British graves in order to capture a live sample of H1N1? Then once acquired we started hearing from "certain" quarters that we were all going to die from bird flu... that we were all facing a "pandemic", stranger too how that it now appears that this did not start in Mexico but in the US.
Who stands to gain?
And theelectrician is absolutely right, compared with normal influenza's, this "pandemic" hasn't even scratched the surface in regards to deaths, this is not 1918 where we did not have antibiotics or 1968 where our medical knowledge was still far from what it is today, people died in 1918 more due to poor diet, poor environment and a general unhealthiness due to pollutions and lifestyle.
I answered the question.
theelectrician is not "absolutely right". WHO definition of pandemic has been met, therefore it is a pandemic.
Pandemic does not imply fatalities, it implies spread.
And we have yet to see the full impact of this flu outbreak yet - the fact that it is spreading so easily should be of great alarm to us all when we see what happens this winter.
Coming on here making blasé comments about how it's harmless, or it's a government conspiracy are just pathetic.
-- a new flu virus, to which no or few people have immunity (in this case, the elderly seem to have some immunity)
--a new flu virus which causes "significant disease," which most flu viruses do.
--a new flu virus which spreads geographically as described by commenters above.
The 1977 re-emergence of a 1950-like H1N1 strain of the H1N1 subtype of flu swept the world geographically; but it was not really novel, because most people seemed to have some immunity to it. It caused illness mostly in children, and did NOT cause significant disease or mortality, unlike most seasonal strains of influenza.
Thus, some experts refer to the 1977 re-emergence of H1H1 as a pandemic, but most do not.
The current new strain of H1N1 is certainly causing significant disease. With luck, it will remain at or below its current level of virulence. The main worry, of course, is that its virulence will increase before the pandemic winds down.
Good grief! what a ridiculous response. If you want to correct any misunderstandings I have about the technical definition of the word 'pandemic' then by all means please do so.
However, I do realise that you're afraid to behave like this with people face to face so you take out your frustrations on anonymous commenters in newspapers and probably other places.
We provide a form of psychiatric social service for you, go ahead and insult me some more, you'll feel better for a while.
And what kind of social service is this providing for you, where you try and belittle the actual situation with your Daily Mail-esque lines of "More people die of regular flu"?
We should be preparing for the worst and hoping for the best, not just dismissing it because only a few people have died so far (out of flu season it has to be said).
And actually I would happily respond as I did to you to anyone in person who had the crassness to suggest it's not a pandemic because only a couple of hundred people have died so far.
www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread47696
Putting this in perspective, the other regular strains of influenza kill 10,000 people every year.
Where is the pandemic? This is all just so much hot air
Pandemic does not have any suggestion of severity or fatality.
We will see as to the true severity when autumn and winter arrive
http://www.rense.com/general86/lat.htm
There was me thinking it was the flu.
Give me strength.
My numbers were off in my original comment. It wasn't 10,000. It was 30,000 that the other flu's kill every year. This only increases the absurdity that this so-called pandemic is anything to worry about. Get a grip people. Get some perspective.
"H1N1" is not a strain of influenza. It is a subtype.
The current flu pandemic is caused by the same SUBTYPE of flu that caused the 1918 pandemic, decades worth of seasonal flu after the 1918 pandemic wound down and before the 1957 H2N2 pandemic pushed it aside, and two decades of seasonal flu after a 1950-type strain of the H1H1 subtype re-emerged (probably from a lab) in 1977.
It is completely incorrect to say that the current pandemic H1N1 is the "same strain" as any previously known H1N1 strain. The essence of this pandemic strain of H1N1 is that it is a NEW -- NOVEL -- previously unknown STRAIN of the H1N1 subtype of influenza.
Same strain of influenza was released by accident three decades ago
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
It is not a study, but rather a review of previous research, and in it it mentions the 1977 reemergence of a human H1N1 strain. This strain was so genetically similar to 1950 human H1N1 strain but yet dissimilar to later human H1N1 strains that we can conclude it was probably from a frozen source, released accidentally in to the wild. The paper suggests that a 1976 incident involving transmission from US Swine H1N1 to a person in Fort Dix spurred research that led to this accidental release. This is all believable and old history.
The paper then writes that an H1N1 strain became a human seasonal 'flu. No evidence is given that this is related to the release, although it could be implied.
The paper does not say that this H1N1 release or strain is caused our current pandemic human H1N1 strain. The paper goes on to describe the genetics of the current H1N1 strain thusly:
1930 US Swine H1N1 very similar to 1918 Spanish H1N1
1957 Human H2N2 from avian H2Nx + 1957 H1N1 'flu
1968 Human H3N2 from avian H3Nx + human H2N2 (Another free paper within the same journal -- reference 2 of the paper -- gives this date)
1976 US Swine H1N1 found in European pigs
1979 Eurasian Swine H1N1 from Avian H1N1 (unrelated to 1977 release of human H1N1)
1998 US Swine H1N1 combines with human H3N2 and an avian 'flu to form US Swine H1N2
2008 US Swine H1N2 combines with Eurasian Swine H1N1 to form 2008 Swine H1N1; our pandemic strain
Where's the 1977 human H1N1 in this history? Where's even the seasonal H1N1?
The paper mentions in it's conclusion that our new pandemic H1N1 shares three gene segments with seasonal H3N2 and 3 with seasonal H1N1, but the history does not show any route for seasonal H1N1 to have passed those segments to pandemic H1N1. It is more likely, rather, that they are simply inherited due to the common history.
So the answer is: No, the accidental release of human H1N1 'flu in 1977 did not cause pandemic swine 'flu.
It is worth mentioning however, that the release of H1N1 'flu in 1977 means we should be cautious in our research so as not to cause accidental release of any previous strains.
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