Beyond Bird Flu: The Perfect Microbial Storm

reply to post by WyrdeOne


You make an outstanding point about our modern cultre being over "hygieneized" (made that word up). I remember spending my childhood in trees, using our spit to wash off wounds, and combing burrs out of our hair. Parents would keel over now if that were the case. And as a result of our active youths, we were rarely ill.

As well, exposure to nature, whether livestock or other forms CAN help (unless we worry about Hanta...). The highest rates of children's asthma is in inner cities- the TB of the 21st century..

And our adaptibility (re: sickle cell and malaria) shows we hve co-evolved with microbes. The problem is US- not the microbes. WE have pushed the microbes to an unnatural state, and not vice versa, IMO

reply to post by soficrow


Thank you, Sofi- THANK you! CA- MRSA is something people believe only happens in nursing homes or inner city hospitals.
It is ubiquitous in every clinic, more dangerous than almost any microbe we contact int he West, and if there were a reassortment with MRSA genes and flu- I'd kiss a lot of us goodbye.

On a personal note- when I had my last surgery in October, I was swabbed for it upon arrival and given intra-nasal prophylactic antibiotic during my stay, despite my refusal of it- vancomycin gel. Now- my surgery was invasive as hel* but nonetheless, I felt as though the hospital used it's patients to breed out the last viable antibiotic against MRSA! This is a hospital connected with the University of Chicago- one would think they would know better....

reply to post by soficrow


Microbes ARE our friends- without probiotics, we get stomach cancer. The bacteria that line our guts communicate with GI epithelial cels and send more signals than our GI cells. We would, quite literally, die without them.

reply to post by soficrow


Sofi- you rock.

moderators- sorry. Had to

reply to post by soficrow


Sofi-

Forgive me for a facile response based on pop culture- but has anyone read "Rainbow Six" by Tom Clancy? I mention it because a group of lunatics who create an airborne strain of Ebola (don't ask- mediocre science) build a facility in KANSAS that nearly exactly fits your description - it's their place to hide as the world dies around them.

How many Gov sites exist as contingency sites- like Cheyenne if there were nukes- in the case of a bio-attack or outbreak? I apologize again for the anecdotal reference, but it struck me as being WAY to close to your description- from a novel written some 10-12 years ago...

reply to post by soficrow


If it's not MRSA, I hope it's not Strep A, either. There are some bizarre illnesses croppingup all around, non?

reply to post by deessell


Deessell-

A "spray-on" decontaminant could be put in a crop duster over fields, or in high-flying aircraft, as chemtrails. Great call on catching the info BEFORE the E. coli outbreak (of how many on produce this year?) Not to mention the "Mexican" connection to hot peppers most recently....

reply to post by soficrow


Glad you stopped the statins. They're probably the single most dangerous class of drugs on the market.

did you know the US is thinking of writing them for KIDS? Don't stop eating Big Macs- don't get exercise- take a pill that will ruin your body, but lower your cholesterol. Cholesterol is critical to life- cell membranes, hormones, neurotransmitters. And- no one will admit this- it is cardio-PROTECTIVE. If you go to hospital in Japan with congenstive heart failure, they run CoQ10 IV, not "drugs". The guy who won the Nobel for characterizing Q10 got sacked from Merck, as he said it would work better than statins, and you can't patent a naturally occurring protein....

So glad you're ok- don't know what to say

Another "sign."

'We...found their lungs are as black as charcoal."

sofi

Has anyone considered the Haj- happening RIGHT NOW- with millions of pilgrims from all over the world? 4 people have died already- from garden variety H1N1-
Now- Egypt and China are putting out urgent warnings about H1N1 and H5N1 re-assortment risks- that read (to me, at least), as though they were a fait a compli.......

Sofi- you are correct. This is a perfect storm. Even if the flu just gains virulence, the Eastern Europeans have a terrible time with TB- perfect vectors. SE Asia battles cholera, etc. Africa is loaded with parasites, TB, malaria. Yellow fever is still everywhere "hot". Dengue fever is breaking out in S America. Hell, even in the US we are having meningitis and measels outbreaks.

The flu doesn't need to get "too bad" to kill a whole lot of us. Imagine the havoc that will be induced if the strain(s) mutate in 'the wrong direction"? 1918 will look like a warm-up......

oops - wrong thread!!!

reply to post by soficrow


The government expects a pandemic to start in Africa, which is why CDC has specialists there. or a place like China. China is a bigger concern because of their obsessiveness with how they are seen, they are hesitent to release any news.

The reason they want to track cows is because the meat industry allowed mad cow to go through, and other animals that are not fit for food. This is more of an internal problem.

Originally posted by WyrdeOne
What role does the human immune system play in all this? I mean, we've got a fantastic defense. It's not iron-clad, but it's damn good at what it does.
If we were meeting this challenge with a nutrient-rich diet, good but not over-the-top hygeine, plenty of clean water and air, wouldn't we stand a better chance?

Yes, first world countries fare better for this reason.

Sure, lots of people are going to die. People die every day. The folks that don't die are alive for a reason.

Would you be so blaise if it was your siblings or your child?

You can make efforts to less exposed. That and hygiene go a long way.

Some folks are naturally immune to things that bring the rest of us to our knees. In some cases there's a price to pay (like the relationship between sickle-cell and malaria), but it's the way we've gotten this far.

Not that many, malaria is still one of the most lethal diseases in the world. About 650,000 people die each year from malaria.

Presumably there have always been diseases, though never so many, or such potent forms, capable of moving so quickly among populations. But still, can we not have some faith in innate human toughness and resilience?

YOu mean like the Spanish flu, which was only 100 years ago, and was the worst pandemic of all?

Originally posted by CultureD
Has anyone considered the Haj- happening RIGHT NOW- with millions of pilgrims from all over the world? 4 people have died already- from garden variety H1N1-

Four people out of millions is a very low number. That many could of died of peanut allergies.

Now- Egypt and China are putting out urgent warnings about H1N1 and H5N1 re-assortment risks- that read (to me, at least), as though they were a fait a compli.......

Really? Links please. This is news to me..

Sofi- you are correct. This is a perfect storm. Even if the flu just gains virulence, the Eastern Europeans have a terrible time with TB- perfect vectors.

Ok....
TB has always been there.

[Hell, even in the US we are having meningitis and measels outbreaks.

The meningitis is a rare fungal form from contaminated medicine. It is not contagious, and no more new cases have cropped up.

The flu doesn't need to get "too bad" to kill a whole lot of us.

It kills 15-35,000 peole a year depending on the strain.

Imagine the havoc that will be induced if the strain(s) mutate in 'the wrong direction"? 1918 will look like a warm-up......

The wrong direction? First off, we have surveillance and controls in place. Just our cleaner way of life will make a difference. We can develop vaccines in months.

reply to post by CultureD


Good thing that it is fiction and ebola isn't as contagious as people think. Nor can it become airborn.

reply to post by soficrow


*laughs*

You can't take a handful of diseases and mix them up to create doom porn. That is like hoping a sheep will breed with a pic and make a shig.

reply to post by nixie_nox


It's amazing how many biological rules have been broken over the past few decades - and how much dogma and doctrine has been dumped. For example, the reality of antibiotic and pesticide resistance in bacteria blow so much right out of the water - resistance is conferred by "horizontal gene transfer" and NOT vertically by inheritance, contrary to earlier assumptions and 'common descent' doctrine. …When one bacteria develops resistance, the adaptation spreads through the entire community like wildfire - or the common cold. Such genes may be considered "infectious DNA." Wotta concept!

Horizontal gene transfer

* ISS: The direct uptake of foreign genetic material by cells and incorporation into the cells’ genome.

* Wiki: also lateral gene transfer (LGT) or transposition refers to the transfer of genetic material between organisms (by means) other than vertical gene transfer (inheritance).

* USDA: Transmission of DNA between species, involving close contact between the donor's DNA and the recipient, uptake of DNA by the recipient, and stable incorporation of the DNA into the recipient's genome.

There are several mechanisms for horizontal gene transfer:

* Transformation, the genetic alteration of a cell resulting from the introduction, uptake and expression of foreign genetic material (DNA or RNA). This process is relatively common in bacteria, but less so in eukaryotes. Transformation is often used in laboratories to insert novel genes into bacteria for experiments or for industrial or medical applications. See also molecular biology and biotechnology.

* Transduction, the process in which bacterial DNA is moved from one bacterium to another by a virus (a bacteriophage, or phage).

* Bacterial conjugation, a process in which a bacterial cell transfers genetic material to another cell by cell-to-cell contact.

* Gene transfer agents, virus-like elements encoded by the host … (ie. transposons)

Wiki

Transposons are quite interesting - long thought to be "junk DNA," they are now recognized as rather important. (Understatement.)

transposon:

a segment of DNA that can move from one place to another in a cell's genome or between a bacterial cell and a plasmid or virus. Viruses may even carry a transposon from one bacterium to another. Also called jumping gene, transposable element.

Mosby's Medical Dictionary, 8th edition. © 2009, Elsevier.

As viruses carry transposons from one bacteria to another, and prions from one human host to another, we can infer that viruses likely carry transposons between humans as well.

Horizontal gene transfer revolutionized evolutionary theory. The "universal phylogenetic tree" is now best understood as a network - and visualizing adaptation as part of an evolutionary network involves recognizing that there's likely more than one single step involved in any successful process.

With regard to how horizontal gene transfer affects evolutionary theory (common descent, universal phylogenetic tree) Carl Woese says:

"What elevated common descent to doctrinal status almost certainly was the much later discovery of the universality of biochemistry, which was seemingly impossible to explain otherwise. But that was before horizontal gene transfer (HGT), which could offer an alternative explanation for the universality of biochemistry, was recognized as a major part of the evolutionary dynamic. In questioning the doctrine of common descent, one necessarily questions the universal phylogenetic tree. That compelling tree image resides deep in our representation of biology. But the tree is no more than a graphical device; it is not some a priori form that nature imposes upon the evolutionary process. It is not a matter of whether your data are consistent with a tree, but whether tree topology is a useful way to represent your data. Ordinarily it is, of course, but the universal tree is no ordinary tree, and its root no ordinary root. Under conditions of extreme HGT, there is no (organismal) "tree." Evolution is basically reticulate (forming a network)."