dottore pesta: January 2006

US 'unaware' of emerging bioterror threats

The life sciences are developing so quickly that a watch list of dangerous pathogens and toxins is useless in fighting the threat of bioterrorism, says a new report from the US National Academy of Sciences. ... {more}

The report, on "next generation" bioterrorism, was requested by the US government. It concludes that intelligence agencies are too focused on specific lists of bacteria and viruses, and are not aware of emerging threats. ...

Bird flu found in Saudi Arabia

Bird fall from avian flu confirmed in Crimea
As many as 311 head of wild birds were found dead on the Crimean south coast. The birds, mainly wild ducks, were found in the vicinity of Partenit, Alushta, and in the Laspi Bay.

Prompt tests proved avian flu in the birds, which were found in Alushta. According to the Emergencies Management Ministry press service, poultry have been withdrawn in the areas, where bird flu cases were registered

Bird Flu Death of Iraqi Girl Confirmed

Fear and Bird Flu

Frank Furedi explains how fear works against understanding bird flu: Bird flu prophets of doom spread nothing but needless alarm

Investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have completed the first large-scale study of bird flu virus genomes, thereby doubling the amount of genetic information available on the genes and proteins of these viruses. The results of the project could lead to major insights into the bird flu virus known as H5N1, the researchers said. H5N1 is the bird flu virus currently infecting humans in Asia and Eastern Europe, and flu experts fear it could mutate in a way that would allow it to cause a worldwide pandemic in humans.

Just Imagine...

Wonder how people react to even the possibility of a plague-like illness? Sentiments like the following exhibit how hysteria and panic begin. ...

According to David Porter at the Orlando Sentinel:

It's amazing how fast that sickness spread. Then it occurred to me: What if it was bird flu?

Bill Toth, an epidemiologist with the Orange County Health Department, assured me that more than likely most of the people with symptoms similar to mine were suffering from rhinovirus, a common cold bug. But he agreed that the ease with which the rhinovirus spread should cause everyone to think about the bird flu.

Too many people treat the bird flu as though it's theoretical. For one thing, it's not even in this country. What's more, that form of the bug can be spread only from bird to bird, or from bird to humans. It is noteworthy that half the humans who caught it died.

So far, though, it can't spread from human to human. But Toth and thousands of other scientists fear that it will mutate into a form that will make it very contagious among humans.

The repressed hysteria and panic are deafening.

Flu Pandemic Inevitable

A University of Iowa scientist told her audience that a flu pandemic was "inevitable."

According to the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

A pandemic is absolutely inevitable; that is what every scientist believes," Gilchrist said.

What offers some hope, Gilchrist said, is that if it is caused by bird flu, scientists have never before known so much about a disease before a possible outbreak.

There are about 150 strains of bird flu, including H5N1, she said. It has been traced to infected chickens in Hong Kong in 1997 and has been confined mostly to Southeast Asia, though two deaths recently occurred in Turkey.

The disease could spread to Iowa, Gilchrist said, through the importation of infected birds, migration of wild birds, bioterrorism or travelers returning from an infected area.

Gary Eden, who farms land between Hills and Lone Tree, said the presentation helped him realize an outbreak would affect more than just farmers and that it could spread rapidly.

"The consequences of this, if it were to hit, would probably not be realized by the public right away," he said.

Plague/Bird Flu Roundup 1/28/06

Selected Recent Plague/Bird Flu News on Google

Black Plague and Typography

Ever wonder why and where different fonts had their origin? Very few do... Being an editor and writer, however, I find it fascinating to see how such things like fonts that we take for granted have their origins... Okay, so what does the Black Plague have to do with fonts?

According to DT&G Magazine:

From the 1200s through the early 1300s the civilized world was enjoying a rise in art, literature and education. Society was moving away from the chaos of the feudal structure, settling ever growing cities.

This was a time of rapid expansion for the written word. The ever growing demand for books for common people drove the development of paper, and the rise of a scribe class. Lettering and the early dawns of typography was expanding rapidly throughout society -- as scribes strived to keep up with demand.

But you're probably asking yourself what's the Black Plague got to do with typography? Besides being a fitting topic for our October issue, the Black Plague is probably one of the most important events in the letterform.

In 1347, the Bubonic Plague began to spread across Europe. For more than thirty years it killed without warning -- sending more than forty percent of the population to the infernos of the funeral pyres. It became known as the "Black" plague because within four days of contracting the disease, the victim would die and the corpse would quickly turn black. Most unsavory.

Author: Bird Flu Pandemic Threatens Globalization

Allister Heath provides background to economic implications of a bird flu pandemic.

Heath writes:

IN his classic account of the Plague in his great work Decameron, published in 1350, the Italian humanist Giovanni Boccaccio wrote that “what gave this pestilence particularly severe force was that whenever the disease mixed with healthy people, like a fire through dry grass or oil, it would run upon the healthy.”

The western world has become remarkably complacent, assuming that the scenes described so vividly by Boccaccio will never again be seen outside the Third World. Rich countries often labour under the illusion that – thanks to hugely improved hygiene, high living standards, scientific breakthroughs and readily available healthcare – they are now safe from the devastating infectious diseases that used to sweep the world at regular intervals, killing millions of people.

Recalling Camus in Context of Turkish Bird Flu Outbreak

David Judson recalls sitting on a Minnesota train and reading Albert Camus' novel, The Plague. He recalls that work's message after reading reports from the Turkish press on the Avian Flu outbreak in that country.

Judson writes [NOTE: You will need to register to access this article}:

Much of the news this week rekindles that memory of his [Camus'] message. Which essentially is about choice, perhaps the essential point of all the existentialists. We can choose opportunism and retreat into selfishness. We can choose service, preparation and accept the challenge to move faster than a ravaging virus. Such challenges as avian flu put us to a terrible test, of course. And the toll already taken is not to be lightly regarded. But that test itself holds its own separate promise.

Which I think was the point of our weekend columnist Doğan Satmış, who is a senior editor at mass daily Hürriyet. He asked the question in print over the weekend, �What peasant will participate in a culling program with compensation of YTL 3 per chicken?� The answer is very few.

Two days later, our columnist Güven Sak likened wrestling with avian flu to a choice between the board games of backgammon or chess. A game of strategy or a game of random chance? We must pick, he said. He sought to tell us something very close to the message of Camus. We can retreat into fatalism or put our own shoulder to the wheel. �The events of avian flu have brought a certain momentum to certain sectors of animal husbandry, where there is a need in any event for modernization and reform.� His point is in part that much of what we are doing in response to this virus involves steps we should have taken before. This is an observation we must keep in mind.

In his novel, Camus warned us of opportunists. If memory serves, it was the character of a prisoner who played this in �The Plague.� Our news editor here at Referans, Sefer Levent, warned us the very same in an analysis this week: That speculators are already moving to corner the market on eggs that will leap in price for industrial users.

Plague/Bird Flu Roundup 1/26/06

Selected Recent Plague/Bird Flu News on Google

Mapping the Spread of Disease

Dr. Priya Saxena provides information about how advanced in computing can help map the spread of diseases like bird flu and plague.

Dr. Saxena writes:

Until now, numerous models of the geographic spread of disease were based on the assumption that viruses disperse over geographic areas in a way similar to the diffusion of fine dust particles on the surface of water. These standard models can describe the wavelike spread of historical pandemics quite successfully. Dirk Brockmann concludes that "the consequence of these results is that new theoretical concepts must be developed to understand the geographic spread of modern diseases.

Militarizing Disease

Pat Farnack describes how disease becomes a crime. Besdies some historical background, she also provides some subjective comments on seeing sick people, providing a look into how fear and anxiety overcome us when faced with the threat of disease.

Farnack writes:

Over two hundred years ago, a bounty hunter knocked on a young woman's door in the wild and rural Kingdom of Hawaii. She was suspected of having leprosy and without further comment, she was carried off to the island of Molokai where she remained until her death.

Sadly, she didn't had a contagious form of the disease, yet she was forced to live out her final days in exile. That's one of many stories told by John Tayman in his new book "The Colony" about what happens when " a government
militarizes a disease."

Tayman sat up and took notice when, in October, President Bush discussed a possible quarantine should the avian flu take root here on our shores. The level of fear is beginning to boil, as four people have died in Turkey and two dozen or so in Asia and there is growing concern that the bird flu may begin to spread from bird to human, and then human to human in America, too.

Kabbalah Site: Kabbalah Predicted Bird Flu

A Kabbalah for Women posting asserts that Kabbalists not only rpedicted the Holocaust but also the recent bird flu outbreak. ...

According to the blogger:

I never realized so many kids in Turkey liked playing with dead chickens .... I'm sure I've mentioned here about a thousand times already that nature will keep coming up with new things to make us wake up and ponder the meaning of our lives. Even if it means killing millions of us, and just leaving about a million people on the planet ... the Kabbalists tried to warn us before WWII and the Holocaust but we didn't listen.

Besides the rather regrettable swipe at Turkish kids--we're supposed to think that's funny or something? ironic?--the author's pretensions that Kabbalah predicted such specific events is somewhat disconcerting to me.

While I might agree that Kabbalah deals with the general fallenness of human beings, does it really think that it can read the mind of Mind? Not only that, but the ascription of divine purpose to chaotic events such as natural disasters aligns God's actions pretty closely to God's purpose. It seems like the Kabbalists agree with some things that the Rev. pat Robertson has said recently.

On the other hand, the blog does provide the following observation for edification:

The universe is pulling out all the stops now to bring us together with the latest bird flu issue. "Teamwork urged" says the Post, for combating this latest deadly threat to the human race. "We need to deal with this together. . . . If one country is inadequately prepared, it is a threat to every other country," said Bernard Vallat, head of the World Organization for Animal Health.

A New Plague... Metaphor for Religious Fundamentalism

Big Daddy Joel writes at TPM Cafe on religious fundamentalism as a plague. ...

Big Daddy writes:

Another epidemic, rising from the swamps of from ignorance, is upon us. A threat that kills, maims and threatens life as we know it on this planet. It’s fundamental religion. It is spreading throughout the world with impunity. The threat is most obvious in the Middle East where people murder each other in the most brutal ways.

The plague is upon us here in the United States and even a more insidious form: Christian Fundamentalism.

While agreeing with the sentiment here, I wonder what people would think if Big Daddy used this metaphor for a particular religion: Judaism for example. That brings back memories of Nazi propaganda. So why is it okay to use the metaphor for "fundamentalism"?

To use such metaphors is very dangerous, if only because it compares disease, a biological process with a cultural phenomenon.

Bird Flu Roundup 1/25/06

Selected Recent Bird Flu News on Google

Blast from the Past

Federal Funds Boost Preparation For Bird Flu
Changes Cited in Bird Flu VirusDeadly Strain Acquiring Mutations Similar to Those in Reconstructed 1918 Virus

Tobacco Plant Vaccine Against Plague

Plant-derived vaccines safeguard against deadly plague

Through an innovative feat of plant biotechnology and vaccine design, researchers in the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University have successfully turned tobacco plants into vaccine production factories to combat the deadliest form of plague. The vaccine elicits a protective immune response in guinea pigs. The results are considered to be a milestone in the future development of a new vaccine for human use.

Afghanistan Faces Yet Another Threat

Afghanistan at "huge risk" of bird flu: UN

According to the PakTribune:

KABUL: War-shattered Afghanistan faces a huge risk from bird flu, including a strain that can kill people, and must take urgent action to protect itself, UN experts said Monday.

The Central Asian country is on the path of migrating birds that may be carrying the disease and about 85 percent of its people live in close contact with poultry, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said.

Afghanistan’s veterinary services were also in disarray, having been ignored in the rebuilding of the country after decades of war.

Mad Cow in Canada

Mad cow case `not unexpected'

"Definitely don't worry about this situation," Eby said from his farm in Kincardine, Ont. "I don't foresee a downside in marketing or consumption. The science is with us here."

Although Evans said it was "notable" that the cow contracted BSE after a 1997 ban was imposed on giving cows any feed made from cattle, he also said it is not inconsistent with other cases found around the world.

The inspection agency said the cow showed progressive symptoms and was destroyed after its owner called a veterinarian. The carcass was sent to a Winnipeg lab for testing.

Time Running Out?

U.N. Urges Fast Planning for Bird Flu
By BRADLEY S. KLAPPER, 01.24.2006, 03:03 PM

According to this report:

Countries must speed up preparations to deal with an "inevitable" human influenza pandemic, which could strike soon, a senior U.N. official warned Tuesday.

Black Plague as Paradigm: Historical Study

Historian Samuel K. Cohn provides historical background to leading interpretations of the spread of the black plague and its cultural significance. ...

According to Cohn:

As far back as Thucydides, historians have seen the aftershocks of pestilence as raising the levels of violence, tearing asunder secular cultures, and spawning pessimism and transcendental religiosities.1 A fresh reading of the late medieval sources across intellectual strata from merchant chronicles to the plague tracts of university-trained doctors shows another trajectory, an about-face in the reactions to the plague after its initial onslaught. This change in spirit casts new light on the Renaissance, helping to explain why a new emphasis on "fame and glory" should have arisen in the wake of the West's most monumental mortality.

Custom Plagues from Just $12.95

When I googled plagues, the following ad appeared to the right of the list of hits ...

Sponsored Links
Plaque online
Custom Plaques from Just $12.95
Quantity Discounts. Free Engraving.
www.Trophy.com

South African Plague Fears Allayed by Tests

Tests have proven that rats are not infested with bubonic plague in two South African villages. ...

According to SABC News:

What fuelled fears was the discovery of a presence of two human diseases in a small percentage of the rat population in the city. If passed to humans these could cause flu-like symptoms. The frail, sick and those with low immune deficiencies are more at risk. Olowolagba said: "Leptospirosis and toxiplasmosis are not deadly and can be treated."

The upshot of the survey is that there is no evidence of the much-feared bubonic plague. The city says its vector control programme ranks with the best in the world. Wax poison bait is used in places like storm water drains. In big cities rats thrive in sprawling informal settlements, markets and rubbish heaps. Plans to set up a similar project on plague control elsewhere in the country are on the cards.

Terrorist Cookbook for Plagues On-Line

According to SITE, jihadist organizations have printed online a cookbook for making plague cultures. ...

The Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE) reports on A Manual Instructing in the Use of Plague as a Biological Weapon:

A manual posted to a jihadist forum provides instructions for the cultivation and use of three strains of plague - bubonic, septicemic, and pneumonic - from the Yersinia Pestis microbe, as a biological weapon. The document refers to myriad sources for its foundation, including “Tawhid” magazine, a “book on microbiology by an Arab scholar,” Internet publications, and “Microbiology” textbook by Pelczar, Reid and Chan, and discusses not only the methods of preparing and storing the microbe, either in agar or mice, and security precaution to be undertaken, but the devastation caused by the release of even one gram of the microbe. The author cites a report from 1970 by the World Health Organization that “dropping aerosol composed of 50 kilograms of dried powder containing 106 [units] of this microbe over a city with 5 million inhabitants in a financially developed region, such as the United States, might lead to 150,000 cases of diseases and 36,000 casualties”.

The 8th Plague: New Indie Film

Following in the footsteps of films like The Thing, 28 Days Later, and The Seventh Sign (to name a few), The 8th Plague makes its debut. ...

According to the official website, the storyline includes:

"The 8th Plague" is the terrifying story of a woman named Luna, who is investigating the disappearance of her sister Nikki. The search leads her to an abandoned prison named Halcyon Ridge Correctional Facility. Upon entering the stone and steel walls, she discovers an ancient evil that had been lying dormant until its recent disturbance. Subsequently, she learns the terrible truth about the impending plague of darkness that intends to spread and reclaim the world.

Il Dottore will not see this film very soon, so if you have seen it drop a mini-review. Or just let us know your favorite plague film and why you like it.

Typhoid Fever Caused Plague that Ended Classical Athens

Using DNA testing, researchers have discovered that typhoid fever brought about the decline of ancient Athens. The city is considered by some to be the birthplace of democracy. It was the home of western civilization's greatest philosophers, including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

According to the Bristish newspaper, The Telegraph:

The plague that wiped out one third of the city's population in 430-426 BC was a deciding factor in the outcome of the Peloponnesian Wars, ending the golden age of Pericles and Athens's predominance in the Mediterranean.

The plague broke out during the siege of the city by the Spartans in the early summer of 430 BC. After a hiatus in 428 BC, the epidemic returned in the winter of 427 BC and lasted until the winter of the following year. One-quarter of its army and the charismatic leader, Pericles, also perished.

In his history of the Peloponnesian Wars, the fifth-century-BC Greek historian, Thucydides, who himself fell ill but recovered, gave detailed descriptions but researchers had never managed to agree on its identity, with candidates including bubonic plague, smallpox, anthrax and measles.

dottore pesta

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

US 'unaware' of emerging bioterror threats

Monday, January 30, 2006

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Fear and Bird Flu

Saturday, January 28, 2006

Just Imagine...

Flu Pandemic Inevitable

Plague/Bird Flu Roundup 1/28/06

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Black Plague and Typography

Author: Bird Flu Pandemic Threatens Globalization

Recalling Camus in Context of Turkish Bird Flu Outbreak

Plague/Bird Flu Roundup 1/26/06

Mapping the Spread of Disease

Militarizing Disease

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Kabbalah Site: Kabbalah Predicted Bird Flu

A New Plague... Metaphor for Religious Fundamentalism

Bird Flu Roundup 1/25/06

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Tobacco Plant Vaccine Against Plague

Afghanistan Faces Yet Another Threat

Mad Cow in Canada

Time Running Out?

Black Plague as Paradigm: Historical Study

Custom Plagues from Just $12.95

South African Plague Fears Allayed by Tests

Terrorist Cookbook for Plagues On-Line

The 8th Plague: New Indie Film

Typhoid Fever Caused Plague that Ended Classical Athens

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