Merck Admits to Injecting Cancer Viruses with Vaccines

I just heard about this and it blew my mind!
Watch this video, it stands for itself:

Weee! "Well, we had to replace the mercury with something... how 'bout some cancer causing viruses??"

Uganda Ebola Outbreak: 350 Quarantined

Well first it was Congo, now Uganda has an Ebola outbreak. I wish I could say that the Congolese Ebola spread to Uganda, but the two countries happen to be separated by the rather large country of Zaire, so that seems unlikely. I guess the virus is just endemic in central Africa... Here's the story from AllAfrica:

"About 350 people who have had contact with Ebola victims have been confined to their homes for monitoring in Bundibugyo and Kasese districts. About 253,000 people in the five sub-counties of Bundibugyo district are at risk of contracting the deadly hemorrhagic fever, the World Health Organization and the Ministry of Health said yesterday.

They added that Bundibugyo town council was the most affected.

"We have established that 335 such people participated in burying some of the cases, either as relatives or sympathizers," the Bundibugyo district chairman, Jackson Bambalira, said.

The National Task Force put the figure of the people being followed at 327.

"I am greatly worried that a bigger Ebola bomb could explode, claiming many more lives," Bambalira said.

He added that another 20 people in Kasese had also been confined at home. The suspects were tracked down by local and international experts this week.

Since August when the killer disease broke out, ninety-three were confirmed infected, 24 of whom have died among them Dr Jonah Kule, and four health workers. Kasese, Mbarara and Kabarole districts have been put on high alert.

Blood specimens are being collected for testing at the newly-established Ebola lab, which begins to work this weekend. Results will now be out within 24 hours unlike in the past when the samples would be taken to the US.

Community leaders in Bundibugyo and Kasese have also been registering suspected cases and deaths. LCs have been ordered to restrict movement into homesteads where cases are suspected.

UPDF doctors have also joined the local and international experts in Bundibugyo to combat Ebola, including sensitizing the population. Dr. Kule and the other health workers who died of Ebola were buried yesterday at Bundibugyo Hospital."

--------------------------------------------

I would like to take this time to personally honor Dr. Kule, and all those like him who risk disease and death to help developing nations get medical care. They, in my mind, are true heroes and deserve recognition; especially at a time like this, when one of them dies "in the line of duty."

Amazing Article on Viruses

I was e-mailed an article from The New Yorker about mankind's continued battle against viruses. It's incredibly insightful, but also very long. I suggest you read the whole thing, but I'll only post a few choice quotes from the article here:

"Nothing — not even the Plague—has posed a more persistent threat to humanity than viral diseases: yellow fever, measles, and smallpox have been causing epidemics for thousands of years. At the end of the First World War, fifty million people died of the Spanish flu; smallpox may have killed half a billion during the twentieth century alone. Those viruses were highly infectious, yet their impact was limited by their ferocity: a virus may destroy an entire culture, but if we die it dies, too. As a result, not even smallpox possessed the evolutionary power to influence humans as a species—to alter our genetic structure.

That would require an organism to insinuate itself into the critical cells we need in order to reproduce: our germ cells. Only retroviruses, which reverse the usual flow of genetic code from DNA to RNA, are capable of that. A retrovirus stores its genetic information in a single-stranded molecule of RNA, instead of the more common double-stranded DNA. When it infects a cell, the virus deploys a special enzyme, called reverse transcriptase, that enables it to copy itself and then paste its own genes into the new cell’s DNA. It then becomes part of that cell forever; when the cell divides, the virus goes with it.

Scientists have long suspected that if a retrovirus happens to infect a human sperm cell or egg, which is rare, and if that embryo survives—which is rarer still—the retrovirus could take its place in the blueprint of our species, passed from mother to child, and from one generation to the next, much like a gene for eye color or asthma.

When the sequence of the human genome was fully mapped, in 2003, researchers also discovered something they had not anticipated: our bodies are littered with the shards of such retroviruses, fragments of the chemical code from which all genetic material is made. It takes less than two per cent of our genome to create all the proteins necessary for us to live. Eight per cent, however, is composed of broken and disabled retroviruses, which, millions of years ago, managed to embed themselves in the DNA of our ancestors."

and this:

"Because they no longer seem to serve a purpose or cause harm, these remnants have often been referred to as “junk DNA.” Many still manage to generate proteins, but scientists have never found one that functions properly in humans or that could make us sick.

Then, last year, Thierry Heidmann brought one back to life. Combining the tools of genomics, virology, and evolutionary biology, he and his colleagues took a virus that had been extinct for hundreds of thousands of years, figured out how the broken parts were originally aligned, and then pieced them together. After resurrecting the virus, the team placed it in human cells and found that their creation did indeed insert itself into the DNA of those cells. They also mixed the virus with cells taken from hamsters and cats. It quickly infected them all, offering the first evidence that the broken parts could once again be made infectious. The experiment could provide vital clues about how viruses like H.I.V. work. Inevitably, though, it also conjures images of Frankenstein’s monster and Jurassic Park."

and finally:

"The Nobel Prize-winning biologist Joshua Lederberg once wrote that the “single biggest threat to man’s continued dominance on this planet is the virus.” Harmit Malik, an evolutionary geneticist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, acknowledges the threat, yet he is confident that viruses may also provide one of our greatest scientific opportunities. Exploring that fundamental paradox—that our most talented parasites may also make us stronger—has become Malik’s passion. “We have been in an evolutionary arms race with viruses for at least one hundred million years,’’ he told me recently, when I visited his laboratory. “There is genetic conflict everywhere. You see it in processes that you would never suspect; in cell division, for instance, and in the production of proteins involved in the very essence of maintaining life.

“One party is winning and the other losing all the time,” Malik went on. “That’s evolution. It’s the world’s definitive game of cat and mouse. Viruses evolve, the host adapts, proteins change, viruses evade them. It never ends.” The AIDS virus, for example, has one gene, called “vif,” that does nothing but block a protein whose sole job is to stop the virus from making copies of itself. It simply takes that protein into the cellular equivalent of a trash can; if not for that gene, H.I.V. might have been a trivial disease. “To even think about the many million-year processes that caused that sort of evolution,” Malik said, shaking his head in wonder. “It’s dazzling.”

------------------------------------

In order to understand retroviruses so we can combat them, we have to mess around with them: recreate them, try and change their DNA. The unfortunate downside, of course, is that as this becomes easier to do, it becomes a more appealing biological weapon for terrorists and rogue states.

I have always maintained that continued scientific investigation always outweighs the possible consequences, but this line of research is treading very close to "dangerous science."

The article also discusses how one researcher managed to bioengineer the polio virus, just to "prove that it could be done." Now that, in my opinion, is just plain fucked up.

Eight New Ebola Cases in Congo

From the Associated Press:

"GENEVA (AP) — Eight more cases of Ebola have been identified in Congo, raising to 17 the number of people confirmed to have contracted the deadly illness, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

The cases were confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told reporters in Geneva.

The outbreak in Congo is the first major resurgence of Ebola in years.

At least 170 people have died — though only six were confirmed to have had Ebola — in the affected region of Kasai Occidental over the past four months, and more than 400 have fallen ill, Chaib said.

The fate of the eleven remaining confirmed cases is unknown, WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said.

Some of the cases have tested negative for Ebola, but positive for other diseases like shigella — a diarrhea-like disease — or typhoid. Some of the patients have improved after being given antibiotics, which would have no impact on Ebola, WHO experts said.

According to WHO the so-called "Zaire strain" of Ebola kills over 80 percent of those infected through massive blood loss, and has no cure or treatment. It is spread through direct contact with the blood or secretions of an infected person, or objects that have been contaminated with infected secretions.

Congo's last major Ebola outbreak struck in Kikwit in 1995, killing 245 people. Kikwit is about 185 miles from the site of the current outbreak.

WHO says more than 1,000 people have died of Ebola since the virus was first identified in 1976 in Sudan and Congo. Primates, hunted by many central Africans for food, can carry the virus."

Cryptosporidium Outbreak In Western US

And in my own old home state, too! Oh Idaho, first Sen. Craig and now Cryptosporidium... I think your PR campaign is going great. Boise will big the #1 hotspot for gay tourists, and you also get an excuse to maybe get a contract for a biodefense lab for the state (run on Nuclear energy of course!). Any way, here's the AP with the story:

"BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Nearly 230 Idaho residents have been sickened by a waterborne parasite this year, along with hundreds of others across the Rocky Mountain West, health officials said.

The cryptosporidium outbreak has reached record numbers, Idaho Department of Health and Welfare spokesman Tom Shanahan said, and has federal officials looking at the role water parks and public pools play in spreading the diarrhea-causing parasite.

Since 1995, Idaho has averaged about 23 cryptosporidium cases a year, said Dr. Randall Nett, an epidemic intelligence officer with Idaho's Health and Welfare Department. But this year, 229 cases have been reported, the vast majority in the Boise and Meridian areas.

Nearby Utah has been even harder hit, with more than 1,600 illnesses attributed to cryptosporidium so far this year, Utah Department of Health epidemiologist Diane Raccasi said.

"It's a record year by a long way," said Nett. "There's probably going to have to be some research done to determine if it was weather, rainfall, runoff or other things contributing to the outbreak."

Colorado and other Western states have also reported increases, Nett said. However, Montana has seen a decrease. There have been 42 cryptosporidium cases so far this year, compared to 93 at this point in 2006, according to Jon Ebelt, spokesman for the Montana Department of Public Health and Services. There were 152 total cases last year, driven in part by an outbreak at a Missoula water park, Ebelt said.

Health officials believe splash parks and other recreational water parks can offer the hardy parasite the opportunity to rapidly spread from person to person.

Splash parks are often a feature of city parks, and are popular with younger children because they require no swimming skills. Instead of a pool, water sprays up from spouts in the ground, somewhat like a glorified sprinkler system. Many parks also feature water guns or water slides.

But at parks where water is recirculated, the spray can rinse any contamination — whether from diarrhea, vomit or dirt — down into a water holding area and back up through the water spouts, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Unfortunately, there's no national pool code to regulate how these splash pads are designed, so the CDC is working with a consortium of scientists to come up with a model pool code," similar to what the Food and Drug Administration created for food, Nett said.

"To prevent outbreaks of cryptosporidiosis, change is needed in the way we build and operate the nation's disinfected recreational water facilities," the CDC wrote in a report earlier this summer. "Key changes call for the inclusion of new supplementary disinfection measures that kill the parasite ... and existing chlorine disinfection."

--------------------------------------------------------------

And waterparks are a huge thing in Idaho and Utah, too... the big tunnel ride kind with the giant wave pool. Man those are fun.

Too bad the waterpark industry couldn't standardize cleaning and filtration processes to make them safe... heh. Just goes to show you the lack of standardization when an industry is unregulated.

"Hey there ain't no law that says we can't skimp on our Muriatic acid levels, so fuck it lets save a few nickels!"

It's this kind of thinking that leads to regulation. The market can solve this, but every market solution is a reaction, and prevention is either legislated or the business must up and decide to regulate themselves.

Ebola Spreads in Congo

As always, the assurances by the local government that they have an outbreak under control were untrue. Here's what Reuters is reporting on the situation:

"Health workers launched an emergency operation on Wednesday to fight an outbreak of deadly Ebola haemorrhagic fever in southern Congo, airlifting supplies, setting up isolation tents and disinfecting contaminated areas.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and medical NGOs such as Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) joined local health authorities in a major logistics operation to try to contain the outbreak in Kasai Occidental province of Democratic Republic of Congo.

Congo's government, citing test results from international laboratories, said on Monday at least five cases of Ebola had been confirmed in the province, where authorities have reported more than 160 deaths among 352 sick people over four months."

--------------------------------

And just after their "mystery disease" incident! The worst thing about this, of course, is Congo now has to reset their "... days since an Ebola outbreak" calender.

Does the WHO even care anymore? "Try to contain?" How about a little confidence folks...

Unknown Disease Ravages Congo

Here's something that's more than a little troubling...

"United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) experts have arrived in the centre of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where there has been an outbreak of an unknown but highly deadly illness that is proving to be particularly harmful for young children.

WHO said in a statement today that the exact number of cases and deaths is unknown, but the illness - which so far has no known cause - has a high mortality rate. Most sufferers experience fever, headaches, diarrhoea, vomiting and colicky abdominal pain, and more than 50 per cent of cases involve children under the age of 10.

A joint investigation team from WHO, the DRC's provincial and national health ministries and the National Institute of Biological Research (known by its French acronym INRB) has reached the source of the outbreak, in Kasai Occidental province, and taken clinical samples for laboratory testing.

WHO said it was also mobilizing support to mount an epidemiological investigation and to provide logistics, such as water, sanitation and other supplies, should they be required in any emergency response.

National health authorities in the DRC have already begun implementing measures to improve hygiene, strengthen infection controls, ensure the safety of the water supply and promote safe burial practices to try to limit the outbreak."

Marburg Hits Uganda

While most news sources are reporting on the English Foot and Mouth Outbreak, I personally find hemorrhagic fevers to be a lot more interesting... From BBC:

"An outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus has been confirmed in Uganda's Kamwenge district by the health authorities.

Two miners have been diagnosed with the fast-spreading Ebola-like haemorrhagic fever, close to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

One of them has died and about 40 other people working at Kitaka gold mine have been quarantined, officials say.

Marburg has a high fatality rate. The last reported outbreak was in Angola in 2005 when some 300 people died.

The health ministry has urged local people to report any suspicious cases.

Incubation takes up to 10 days and although the last suspected case was reported 15 days ago, there is still a risk that the disease could re-emerge.

"The last case needs to have been seen 21 days ago before we can actually say we've contained it," Sam Okware of Uganda's taskforce on haemorrhagic fevers told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

Gold miners in DR Congo have been struck by the disease in the past.

Dr Okware says it is not exactly known what causes Marburg, although birds and monkeys are suspected vectors. Rats and bats also reportedly spread the disease to humans.

"My own impression is that the source of the infection is in the mine itself - because when we went there to check, we found almost 5m birds in the mine and the situation was quite unsanitary," he said.

Early symptoms of Marburg are diarrhoea, stomach pains, nausea and vomiting, which give way to bleeding.

It is spread by the transfer of blood or other bodily fluids.

There is no cure. Infected patients need to be kept in isolation so as to prevent the spread of the virus."

-----------------------------

Marburg, of course, is a close relative to Ebola (not just "Ebola-like"). I expect this to spread fast and wide. The last stages are marked by bleeding from orifices, eyes, and even skin pores.