What a fantastic Idea....(scary)
 

I don't know about you, but this kinda makes me worry.....40 million killed and we decide its a good idea to play with it.

Saturday, September 18, 2004

1918 killer flu virus to be tested in UW lab
Study needed to head off next epidemic, scientists say

By TOM PAULSON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

University of Washington scientists plan to infect monkeys with a killer flu virus grown from tissue exhumed from victims of the 1918 epidemic.

They hope the insight they gain will unravel the mystery of why tens of millions of people worldwide died from the virulent flu strain and lead to development of better vaccines and drugs that may save lives in the future.

"This was the most deadly infectious disease in the history of mankind, killing at least 40 million people," said Dr. Michael Katze, a UW microbiologist and principal investigator for the local arm of the project.

"To this day, nobody understands why the virus was so deadly."

Most experts believe another killer flu pandemic is overdue, Katze said, so it's critical to gain information about the disease.

The UW received part of a $12.7 million grant, funded largely from Congress' $1.7 billion biodefense appropriation to the National Institutes of Health, to collaborate on the 1918 flu study with Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C.

A skeptic of resurrecting and enlivening the 1918 flu virus, however, said it is critical to first make sure we are adequately protected against creating a "man-made" pandemic.

"This project could create a new bug that infects someone in the lab who then walks out at the end of the day and, literally, kills tens of millions of people," said Ed Hammond, director of a biotechnology and bioweapons watchdog organization called the Sunshine Project, based in Austin, Texas.

Although Hammond said he could accept the noble intentions of the UW scientists, he noted that there are no national laboratory standards for dealing with this particular virus.

The lack of regulatory protection, he said, stems from the fact that influenza is generally regarded as a fairly routine disease.

"But this organism, the 1918 virus, is something else," Hammond said. "It's very dangerous and easily spread."

He contended that the 1918 virus deserves one of the highest levels of laboratory containment systems, known as Biosafety Level 3 Ag -- so-called because the criteria were set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The only greater level of protection (in which lab workers don self-contained "moon suits" inside a pressurized, air-locked, multilayered lab) is Biosafety Level 4.

The first step in this project will be to spend about $300,000 of the grant to beef up the biosafety levels of protection at the Seattle facility, said Dr. William Morton, director of the regional primate research center at the UW.

"We do need to have an elevated level of containment," Morton said.

The lab facilities, which are primarily used today for HIV research involving primates, are built to Biosafety Level 2.

But Morton said it's not clear that the 1918 flu study will require all the Biosafety Level 3 Ag protections.

He said the plan is to create an "enhanced" level 3 lab on one floor of the primate center, located in a non-descript research building in Belltown.

The difference between a routine Biosafety Level 3 lab and the Biosafety Level 3 Ag lab is significant. Only the latter has an air-lock entry, a system for decontaminating wastewater and various other filters or devices aimed at minimizing the spread of infectious disease.

Morton said the precise design for converting the lab would depend upon recommendations from the NIH.

Karen Van Dusen, UW director of environmental health and safety, said Hammond is correct that there are no agreed-upon laboratory standards for dealing with the 1918 flu virus.

"Our situation here is very similar to the early days of the AIDS epidemic, figuring out how to safely deal with HIV," Van Dusen said.

This is because the 1918 virus had disappeared after the outbreak.

Viral DNA was recovered a few years ago from the exhumed bodies of those killed in the pandemic. Most of the DNA came from those who had died in northern latitudes where the permanently frozen ground had preserved viral DNA.

Scientists at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and at Mount Sinai led some of the expeditions to dig up the 1918 victims and genetically reconstitute the virus.

"We intend to be very cautious," Van Dusen said. "No matter what standard comes out, we intend to meet or exceed it" -- unless the recommendation is Biosafety Level 4. "If they're going to require a Biosafety Level 4, we won't do this," she said.

Katze has already been working with non-infectious, genetic fragments of the 1918 flu virus. He and his colleagues have shown that the macaque monkeys develop infections similar to that of humans and should provide excellent animal models for trying to decipher this killer bug's mode of operation.

Katze's team will seek to learn more about the nature of the 1918 flu by inserting key genes from the killer flu into a common flu strain. The flu virus has only eight genes, said Katze, so they hope to rapidly target which genes are most responsible for virulence. The monkeys will be euthanized weeks after being infected, the UW scientists said, to allow for tissue, cellular and genetic testing.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/191418_flu18.html

I think its truely amazing that we are able to aquire a flu strain from 1918 first of all. The only scary thing about all of this is the fact that they really dont know what they are messing with, and as they said, they have no real standards for dealing with it. Things like this I somtimes feel they should never be brought to the public, for then people know we have these new deadly virus strains only asking to be stolen or mis-used.

They say this flu was the most deadly infectous disease known to man, even more so than the Black Death? Though I bet their research is incredibly interesting, I'm glad I'm many miles away. Maybe they'll be able to make some new vaccines or something down the road, who knows...

dont be paranoid

Thanks for bringing this stuff up - very interesting! I think these things should stay secret. Oh yeah, and they should make triple-sure that the whole thing is save. Truism of the month? You make the call :P

One should remember that this killed millions of people before modern anti-biotics and anti-viral drugs were developed.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be dangerous if it "got loose" again, but I doubt it would kill as many.

Mr Mephisto

I agree with Mephisto.. OMG did I just say that??!! :D this was deadly a LONG time ago. Sure it would be deadly still but I doubt it would be as tragic. I do like the idea of them researching the virus though.. history does hold secrets

To be honest, I fully support scientific research - and I am not the paranoid type - but I firmly believe that when researching any virus, bacteria, or other health threat when it is uncertain as to how it is passed along, or how dangerous it is, it should be tested in a far-away, isolated place. Preferably an island somewhere, so that the damage could be contained if it got loose.

I understand that there are probably tons of precautions being taken, but I personally believe that we need to further limit the chances of something going terribly wrong. Granted, chances of something completely unforseen happening are slim, but you can't be too careful, especially when dealing with obviously dangerous materials, even more so where mode of transmission is unknown.

The article describes it as a non-descript research building... what if a car accident where to damage the building, or a telephone pole was knocked onto the building, ect. The chance of something like that happeneding are extremely small, but why risk it? Put it in an area where worse case scenario destroys a small island out there, instead of spreading like wildfire across the world. Epidemics back in the day were bad, but they typically took place in certain areas because travel was so limited, not to mention took so long. If ever someone was infected and they hopped on a plane, they could be anywhere in the world within a day - not to mention be near and possibly transmitting the virus/bacteria/whatever to tons of other people - other travelers, specifically, at the airport(s)

Bah, enough ranting - like I said, I am not the paranoid type, I just think that when dealing with unknowns - especially large calibur ones that have caused so much death in the past, bringing back with who knows what mutations, in a new world with different rules and ways to travel - you can ever be too safe.

Well, who said that we don't learn from history?

I can go both way. It's stupid to bring back old dormant diseases, on the other hand, we could learn something from it...

Captain Tripps anyone?

(Noone will probably get that)

Doesn't really seem like a good idea to me, messing w/ something like that.

/me moves out of Raccoon City.


I agree the world is much different. I think overall we are cleaner and more germ conscious then days of yore, especially in food handling and standards. couple that with immunizations and I think we're more prepared for a virus like this if it did get out.

Hopefully they will be smart and handle all of this stuff in environmentally controlled rooms and what-not. It's to not let it get out in the first place than to let it get out and have to deal with the results.

that is scarry- in a way its great research, but that epidemic was soooo bad- and yeah we could have another one any time now.... seems like stuff like that would be of interest to the terrorists of the world as well, hopefully they are taking security precautions- 12 monkeys anyone?

Research like this is done all of the time. As long as we don't share it with our allies so they can eventually sell it on the black market we should be fine.

A lot could be gained from research and some pretty sophisticated containment protocols have been developed for these things in only the past 20-30 years.

The Ebola virus was a HUGE learning curve for health professionals.

im gonna wake up after 28 days to find the human race almost wiped out

and then wander around aimlessly, take up way too much time of my life, turn into a generic zombie-incident, and have a horrible ending :thumbsup:

Well... ok yes, this happened a while ago before we had modern medicines and such... but you can't kill a virus. Antibiotics are all well and good for bacterial infections, but not viral ones. If it got out of hand, they'd have to try antiviral therapy on people to get rid of it, and that's if they can catch it fast enough. There are only a few kinds in use right now... a few for strands of herpes and a few for HIV. Unfortunately, they're not interchangable, so they'd have to come up with one that specifically targets this new flu virus. By the way, it takes years to synthesize an effective virus therapy. Even if our current medicinces worked on it (which they won't), you realistically can only initiate antiviral therapies in so many people (limited supply)- and that's if you can catch them all before they spread to even more people.

Just thought i'd toss that in there.

Excellent Point, Analog.

This isn't a simple matter of a blanket anti-bacteria, this is potentially more serious and just as hard to cure as Aids. Nowadays, the better sanitation and hygiene conscious people may have a difference, but I would imagine it would be very little. It has been 20+ years that AIDs has been around, and we still don't have a cure. Most medicines now for the flu simply mask the symptoms, I highly doubt that NyQuil will come out with something that will mask death. As far as research has come, we are still only infantile when it comes to curing virii.

The Hot Zone should be required reading for all the scientists working on this project.

Viruses and other such nasties have always interested me, one billionth our size but very much capable of doing us in. Not even being technically alive makes them all the more interesting, made up of mostly protiens and genetic material they are the simplest and yet most complecated forms of "life" on the planet. People always worry about a nuclear armageddon or an asteroid from space wiping out all human life as we know it but they should be more worried about these little babies.

or to quote a famous guy whom i cant remember at the moment
'This is how the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper'

Where the hell did they get a virus from 1918? Oh nevermind, they got if off tissue off corpses from 1918. I had no idea a virus could live that long.