Beyond Bird Flu: The Perfect Microbial Storm

Mauddib - you are taking my comments out of context. ...I was attempting to reassure khunmoon, and saying we don't have to lose "the war on microbes," because it's not really a war, imo, but a symbiotic and interdependent biological relationship.

Feel free to search the concept of humans as "super-organisms" regarding the microbe-human evolutionary-link hypothesis.

Re: the contradictory statements regarding the Mallard die-off:

The evidence certainly exists to support the charge of a cover-up.

He said the die-off was not typical. ..."It's fairly uncommon, especially in these types of numbers and in such a confined area," he said. "I've never seen anything like this in 20 years here," he said. "There were dead mallards everywhere - in the water and on the banks. It was odd, they were in a very small area." (David Parrish, supervisor for the Magic Valley region of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.)

***

"I've never seen anything like this in 20 years here," he said. "There were dead mallards everywhere - in the water and on the banks. It was odd; they were in a very small area." "Typically, you'd see this spread into other types of waterfowl as well," Parrish said.

Re: Synthetic chemicals', pollution's and environmental contaminants' roles in accelerating the evolutionary process.

Of course microbes have existed for billions of years. That's the point.

We are impacting a system and balance that was billions of years in the making with our "additives" to the biosphere. Of course they have effects - one of the effects being to accelerate the evolutionary process.

Which is not to say it is not a complex system. Of course it is. And that's precisely what we're mucking with.

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A study using a new microarray found 1800 different species of organisms in the air above San Antonio and Austin, Texas - including bioweapons-related pathogens. According to Craig Ventner, who is sequencing the metagenome of the air above New York City, environmental genomics is extremely complex - and the study may greatly underestimate the actual number of different organisms.

1,800 Species of Microbial Organisms Found in Texas City Air

A new "bacterial census" using a novel microarray found surprising microbial biodiversity - including bioweapons-related pathogens - in the air above San Antonio and Austin, Texas. "We're surrounded by bacteria, and they are not necessarily friendly," says Gary Andersen, a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. J. Craig Venter of Celera fame is sequencing the metagenome of the air above New York City; he says microbial genetics is complex - and Andersen may be underestimating the microbial diversity in Texas air. "As weather patterns change, different things go up into the air. We could be changing what's in the air, and unless we know what's in the air now, we'll never know how it changes. It points to a real need for a microbial census," warns Ventner.

This just gets more and more interesting.

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"...one thing is clear: If this virus does not lead to a pandemic, another virus will," Homeland Security's advisor Frances Townsend.

So the message is getting out. But maybe no one is listening - a different problem altogether.

Just found this GREAT site - from an exhibition from the American Museum of Natural History.


EPIDEMIC - the world of infectious diseases


It's simple, easy-to-understand, and well worth scanning at least.

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My crow-sense says the official diagnosis for this epidemic is extremely suspicious; the symptoms reported are bird flu symptoms:

Four S. China middle school students suffer epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis, one dies

Four students from Boyangzhen No. 1 Middle School in the city of Huazhou, South China's Guangdong Province, have been diagnosed to contract epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis and one died, said the provincial disease prevention and control center on Saturday.

The four students, all 13 years old, are classmates in the school.

They successively suffered headache, fever and vomit from Dec. 14 to 20 and were then confirmed to be infectious with epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis, said Peng Guowen, an official with the center.

???

Could i please get a source to the story about the "boils and hemorrages",
Its of interest to me this morning because my daughter in law has one i just found out.

Originally posted by dgtempe
Could i please get a source to the story about the "boils and hemorrages",
Its of interest to me this morning because my daughter in law has one i just found out.

There are several links here:

Superbug Epidemic in US.

I hope your daughter-in-law is getting medical care. ...The bacteria needs to be identified - accurately - and appropriate treatment started immediately.

Good luck. Hope it's not MRSA.

sofi

CA-MRSA is epidemic - and it can be transmitted sexually, as well as by other routes.

...infectious diseases experts are beginning to voice concern that CA-MRSA may become an even larger problem if and when pandemic influenza materializes.

Also, if CA-MRSA mixes with human flu, it may create a pandemic flu strain - if a pandemic flu strain emerges before that happens, then CA-MRSA might hitchhike on that virus instead.


Note: CA-MRSA infection can be acquired from contact with contaminated surfaces and materials - as well as sexually, and probably, via inhalation.


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[edit on 7-1-2007 by soficrow]

Interesting thread but I must admit it's very challenging for me as science was not very interesting to me as a student. But I have been researching a company called Intralytix. What's interesting about this Maryland based company is that it was given FDA approval for a spray on virus.

Intralytix has created a spray with bacteriophages to be applied to food for the prevention of Listeriosis by killing strains of food-borne pathogenic L. monocytogenes bacterium.

It is also interesting to note that the FDA approval came a week or so after the Spinach E Coli outbreak last year.

"As long as it used in accordance with the regulations, we have concluded it's safe," Zajac said. People normally come into contact with phages through food, water and the environment, and they are found in our digestive tracts, the FDA said.

The company is also involved in some interesting projects.

Intralytix, Inc. is a biotechnology company focused on the production and marketing of products using bacteriophages to control bacterial pathogens in environmental, food processing, and medical settings.

Official Company website


This company has sold this spray to a well-known multi-national company (which can't be named). Food that has been sprayed does not need to be labelled. I find this quite disturbing.

"As long as it used in accordance with the regulations, we have concluded it's safe," Zajac said. People normally come into contact with phages through food, water and the environment, and they are found in our digestive tracts, the FDA said.

Consumers won't be aware that meat and poultry products have been treated with the spray, Zajac added. The Department of Agriculture will regulate the actual use of the product.

FDA approves viruses for treating food

Time for a bump.

People are talking about the artificial "panic" created over the swine flu outbreaks. Others insist that swine flu was purposefully engineered, and released, to cause a pandemic.

In fact, conscientious scientists have been predicting the 'perfect microbial storm' for over 10 years.

Something happened in 1997, and the biological world got turned upside down. Animal diseases started infecting plants, plant diseases started infecting animals. Bacteria started eating antibiotics, and thriving on them like they were super-foods - unrelated microbes started cross-breeding - species and kingdom barriers suddenly meant nothing.

The concerned scientists also recommended regulations that would have cut profits to agri-business, Big Pharma, the chemical giants, and international travel and trade. The recommended regs might have worked, but needless to say, the scientists and their recommendations were ignored.

The perfect microbial storm IS coming - without corporate or political bio-terrorism. Any day, some new, easily transmissible, bug like H1N1 swine flu will crossbreed with a lethal bug like H5N1 bird flu. Or Ebola. Or maybe rabies and West Nile Virus. Then we'll find out what deep doodoo really is.

Point being - there's absolutely no need for anyone to release any kind of engineered pandemic strain. The stage is well set - and it started with overriding corporate laws that put profits before people. Now, nature will do the rest. BTW - it's too late to stop it. Those few hard regulations a decade ago might have done the trick, but now, no.

sofi

This new study gives just a hint of some of the mechanics and forces in play...

In 2007, researchers from the J. Craig Venter Institute sailed around the world aboard the Sorcerer II yacht and used metagenomic shotgun sequencing approaches to identify millions of previously unknown protein-coding genes. Then last year, Gilbert and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Edward DeLong each independently performed metatranscriptomic analyses to discover slews of new messenger RNA transcripts. Those studies also turned up many RNA sequences that could not be matched to any known protein-coding genes or ribosomal RNAs, indicating that many non-coding regulatory RNAs might literally be swimming through the seas.

Now, DeLong, his graduate student Yanmei Shi, and postdoc Gene Tyson have discovered that around 30% of all RNA transcripts in the North Pacific Ocean code for short, untranslated transcripts that match to the regions between genes in microbial genomes. The study "shows how many more potential small regulatory RNAs are out there," Gisela Storz, a small RNA expert at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, MD, who did not contribute to the research findings, told The Scientist. "The next part is the hard part, and that's to figure out what they're doing"

..........Researchers have used model laboratory microorganisms to show that small RNAs are involved in regulating important environmental processes including metabolism, quorum sensing, and photosynthesis. To determine whether the novel RNA transcripts were true regulatory small RNAs, DeLong's team looked for matches with known small RNAs, used self-clustering algorithms to group unknown transcripts based on sequence similarity, and compared the RNA folding patterns with known structural motifs. Working out these methods was "not a trivial problem," said DeLong, but "it's a very extensible type of approach." Now, others can use the same techniques to create "biosensors" of environmental perturbations. "Once we start to suss out the patterns [of small RNAs] we might have some pretty powerful markers," he said.

Big ocean, small RNAs

Other studies show that despite past assumptions, RNA does a whole lot more than just silence genes...

I like a lot of what Lovelock has to say, but think his Gaia hypothesis stops well short of the mark. Mainly in that he does not recognize that environmental 'bits' affect living cells in myriad ways.

[Or else he's too much of a eugenicist to care.]

LOL- I just read this as well. It's unbelievable what media can do- a story like that sets up the collective un(consciousness) of the 6 B on the globe, in order to prepare us for disaster. Then, when the Sikorsky's are flying over our houses, we won't question them, but feel gratitude for their "assistance".

It's a perfect chess game, isn't it?

reply to post by khunmoon


As well as microves, don't forget that pharmaceuticals- whether prescribed 'correctly" or incorrectly, kill in excess of 100K US citezens/year. Imagine: 100K people were killed in the fire bombing of Dresden in WWII- that's how many die each year from FDA- approved drugs.

Add microbes to an unhealthy, immunse-suppressed population, poverty in underdeveloped countries (as well as developed!); pharma meds that harm more than help, and we do, indeed, face a perfect storm.

reply to post by khunmoon


Khunmoon- I agree with you about the profit issue- i.e., if we were all dead, no one would be left to fund the system. This is one of the reasons a deliberate influenza outbreak has lurked in my mind. If there were a mission to decimate the population, there are more efficient ways- particularly chemical ones- for example, poisoning the soil where we grow crops, etc. That would kill billions in the blink of an eye. Ebola burns too fast, and is useless as a biowarfare agent- unless it's engineered to hold up under UV (a few cancer cells should do it). Anthrax is ideal because the spores stick around and reinfect often- and most docs miss the diagnosis before it's too late and the infection goes pneumonic. Flu, however, kills just enough to drive market prices of anti-virals, vaccines, hospital and dotor's office billing, etc. Al in the field profit from it- and if "only 100M" die, we still have plenty to tax, exploit with fear, etc. If one wanted to panic a population, drive us out of a recession through stockpile spending of meds and groceries- flu's the way to go.
I don't know if I've ever written anything so cynical, but that's my opinion about your point of decimation vs. economic growth...

reply to post by soficrow


Sofi-

We have worked in government and nanotech labs (who use gold for DNA libraries, rapid test kits, etc.) I can personally attest to everything you have quoted.

reply to post by soficrow


Good lord- we worked on splicing resistant staph into E. coli as undergrads. Check out what the Promega company does. E. coli is ised for genetic engineering because we KNOW the genome and can use it as a factory to make anything we please- at our peril.

We're playing with fire as molecular biologists and it's going to bite us right in the bum, as we have no idea the power of life forms of all varieties to mutate- look at tobacco mosaic virus!

reply to post by soficrow


Rhabdo is also caused by the stain group of drugs, which claim to lower cholesterol, but in fact, lower life span. They block the biosynthetic pathway of cholesterol, while simultaneously blocking hormone, steroid, coQ10 and other critical molecules. One of the side effects is myocardio rhabdo- is anyone asking WHY? Because Merck and Pfizer make about 80B a year on the garbage.

Originally posted by CultureD
reply to post by soficrow

 

Sofi-
We have worked in government and nanotech labs (who use gold for DNA libraries, rapid test kits, etc.) I can personally attest to everything you have quoted.

Thanks C.

Good lord- we worked on splicing resistant staph into E. coli as undergrads. Check out what the Promega company does. E. coli is ised for genetic engineering because we KNOW the genome and can use it as a factory to make anything we please- at our peril.

We're playing with fire as molecular biologists and it's going to bite us right in the bum, as we have no idea the power of life forms of all varieties to mutate- look at tobacco mosaic virus!

Hubris and greed. A great combination. (Not.)

Rhabdo is also caused by the statin group of drugs, which claim to lower cholesterol, but in fact, lower life span. They block the biosynthetic pathway of cholesterol, while simultaneously blocking hormone, steroid, coQ10 and other critical molecules. One of the side effects is myocardio rhabdo- is anyone asking WHY? Because Merck and Pfizer make about 80B a year on the garbage.

Yep. ...FYI - Statins were being pushed back-when as a flu remedy for their anti-inflammatory properties. I was pumped, and got my Dr. to prescribe a statin for me. ....within a couple of months I had severe fibromyalgia, congestive heart failure and a few other nasty symptoms. .....I stopped taking the statin about 3 years ago - only now getting back to normal.

Thanks for the info and your contributions.

reply to post by soficrow


Eloquently said, Sofi- as ever. Economics triumph over public health- yet again.

Please keep sharing your research and analysis.

reply to post by soficrow


As regards the planet's "die-offs":
Look at the Black Death. It killed nearly 90 of Asia, 40-60% of the Middle East, and 30-70% of Western Europe, depending on the region. Now- talk about a perfect microbial storm- not 20 years before it hit, there were earthquakes throughout Asia, which caused the marmots in Mongolia to move quickly- they picked up a strain of Y pestis; spread it to the Crimea and to Europe. But during those 20 years, while the bacterium was ramping up virulence, an influenza pandemic hit the world. Those who lived died quickly of plague, and those who were in the womb of flu sufferers who lived, were born with less immunity. Add to that over-population, over-farmed land, and the 100 Years War, and you have a perfect scenario for a pandemic that seemed to end the world for the survivors. However- those of us who are of European, Middle eastern or Asian heritage are the children of survivors. despite that we have no natural immunity to plague.
There existed in the early 14th C a perfect microbial storm, as there exists now. This is not the first time- nor will it be the last- that disease has "culled the herd" of humans on earth.