Noted researcher Adrian Gibbs, the developer of Tamiflu, has claimed the Swine Flu accidentally evolved in a batch of eggs being used to produce vaccines! He asserts it escaped from the lab by accident, which is an unsettling thought to be sure. Also, Gibbs says the virus appears to be mutating three times faster than similar bugs, an ominous thought if it mutates to a more severe form. It is interesting that WHO is now calling the germ the "Novel/H1N1" strain, adding weight to the assertion that it was synthetically created. Yet the rapid mutation rate is what is most frightening about this virus. It is not something that tends to occur naturally in any other virus of this class. Clearly, this is a unique creature, and may indeed have originated in a bio-lab.
Milfuegos put up a long post concerning the history of H1N1 that makes for an interesting read here. Again, the scariest thing in this research is that they deliberately went out looking for corpses to harvest samples of the 1918 Spanish flu! The arrogance of 'mankind' knows no bounds. The virus is the most ancient life form on the planet, and one we have only just barely come to understand. The thought that we can blithely tinker with these virulent germs in a lab is madness.
On another note, a Canadian researcher was stopped at a North Dakota border check and found to be carrying virus samples into the US! He was taken into custody for attempting to smuggle 22 vials stolen from Canada's National Microbiology Lab. And there was another story last week about flu virus "inadvertantly" shipped to European labs. This is crazy, folks. We are playing with fire when we tamper with these germs. It's bad enough that things like Ebola, HIV, and killer flu exist in nature, but to deliberately engineer new strains like this is lunacy. The rapid spread of the 'Swine Flu' in this latest outbreak should be a sobering wake up call for the world's health organizations. It moved from ground zero in Mexico to nations all across the globe in a matter of two weeks time. Now the germ is out there, mutating at rates never seen before in a flu virus, and that is a frightening thought considering that the flu is perhaps more dangerous to us than a monster bug like ebola.
Milfuegos put up a long post concerning the history of H1N1 that makes for an interesting read here. Again, the scariest thing in this research is that they deliberately went out looking for corpses to harvest samples of the 1918 Spanish flu! The arrogance of 'mankind' knows no bounds. The virus is the most ancient life form on the planet, and one we have only just barely come to understand. The thought that we can blithely tinker with these virulent germs in a lab is madness.
On another note, a Canadian researcher was stopped at a North Dakota border check and found to be carrying virus samples into the US! He was taken into custody for attempting to smuggle 22 vials stolen from Canada's National Microbiology Lab. And there was another story last week about flu virus "inadvertantly" shipped to European labs. This is crazy, folks. We are playing with fire when we tamper with these germs. It's bad enough that things like Ebola, HIV, and killer flu exist in nature, but to deliberately engineer new strains like this is lunacy. The rapid spread of the 'Swine Flu' in this latest outbreak should be a sobering wake up call for the world's health organizations. It moved from ground zero in Mexico to nations all across the globe in a matter of two weeks time. Now the germ is out there, mutating at rates never seen before in a flu virus, and that is a frightening thought considering that the flu is perhaps more dangerous to us than a monster bug like ebola.
