Posted on 10/04/2014 3:00:59 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Peter Piot was a researcher at a lab in Antwerp when a pilot brought him a blood sample from a Belgian nun who had fallen mysteriously ill in Zaire.
Professor Piot, as a young scientist in Antwerp, you were part of the team that discovered the Ebola virus in 1976. How did it happen?
I still remember exactly. One day in September, a pilot from Sabena Airlines brought us a shiny blue Thermos and a letter from a doctor in Kinshasa in what was then Zaire. In the Thermos, he wrote, there was a blood sample from a Belgian nun who had recently fallen ill from a mysterious sickness in Yambuku, a remote village in the northern part of the country. He asked us to test the sample for yellow fever.
These days, Ebola may only be researched in high-security laboratories. How did you protect yourself back then?
We had no idea how dangerous the virus was. And there were no high-security labs in Belgium. We just wore our white lab coats and protective gloves. When we opened the Thermos, the ice inside had largely melted and one of the vials had broken. Blood and glass shards were floating in the ice water. We fished the other, intact, test tube out of the slop and began examining the blood for pathogens, using the methods that were standard at the time....
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Good read with some good history. The initial discovery was also told in "The Hot Zone".
We should ban all passengers on airlines from that region.
Smarter man than anyone we’ve currently got in the top levels. (1) He thinks the 3-day quarantine was worth trying (2) he notes that it was political appointees, not the best people, on the ground in Africa at the beginning of the outbreak
With regard to (2), sounds like what we’ve got going on here right now
Excellent article from an interview with a man that has some good pros and cons to consider. His fears have been realized in some aspects.
Inside the article, mosquitoes are mentioned but the Nun unwittingly spread the virus via injections of vitamins via needles. Wonder if mosquitoes can or could eventually spread the virus if enough mutations of the virus were to occur?
And with this epidemic there were many factors that were disadvantageous from the very beginning. Some of the countries involved were just emerging from terrible civil wars, many of their doctors had fled and their healthcare systems had collapsed. In all of Liberia, for example, there were only 51 doctors in 2010, and many of them have since died of Ebola.
Imagine less then 51 doctors in the whole country of Liberia.....
In any decent sized hospital in any major American city there are more...
Very interesting. Thanks for posting. Be prepared.
“The guy was most worried about two scenarios: The likelihood that it would get to India and spread out of control and the worry that it might mutate...the mutation being that it would keep victims alive a couple of weeks longer to spread the disease.”
Mutation was what ‘Mother Abigail’ worried about too. She was the retired CDC scientist who used to post here at FR. She had worked on Ebola and other nasty bugs.
IIRC she believed it’s just a matter of time before one of these really lethal viruses mutates in a way that allows it to spread like wildfire. Mutation is what these bugs do best.
And then our modern transportation systems will become disease vectors efficiently spreading death around the globe. whoopee
It’s going to be fine. The conditions in Africa that accelerate the spread of the disease are more widespread than the are in the USA.
For the umpteenth time NOT mutate, attenuate. It is WHAT VIRUSES DO. Read about Louis Pasteur. This ain’t new and unlike globule warming it IS settled science.
Your body basically melts and your drown on your own body.
Nothing to see here, sheep just move along.
??
An attenuated virus is a crippled one used as a vaccine to provoke an immune response.
But viruses certainly mutate:
http://jvi.asm.org/content/84/19/9733.full
amen. and not bring any infected back here or to other countries. we can’t trust our own people to take it seriously. they’ve proven that.
51 doctors... hmm.. this is what Obamacare is supposed to achieve
They become less lethal, attenuate enough and you have a vaccine. Attenuate Ebola and you go from symptomatic in hours to days, dead in days to weeks. So a disease that was previously so deadly there was nothing to worry about to a disease that can cause a real epidemic. The point is this behavior is not unique it is actually the usual thing. It took Pastuer 28 passes to go from wild rabies to vaccine IIRC. Less you just get a virus that takes longer to maime and kill. Ironically as this virus has gotten less lethal it has become MORE dangerous. To use the word mutate implies several things, one being it might not happen. What I am describing was guaranteed to happen. Mutations can happen several ways, cross breeding being one. Attenuation does not require or utilize cross breeding. It happens in pure culture. Errors in transcription is another source of mutation again I don’t think this is what happens in attenuation. Mutation is a different thing. Why is the distinction important? One may or may not happen the other is a certainty.
When viruses attenuate they do so through mutation.
Thanks for the explanation. I didn’t realize that attenuation is normal virus behavior.
You’re right, it’s attenuation of Ebola that is making it far more dangerous than when it would kill its human hosts faster.
That certainly puts a different spin on things. In that case I imagine that this current outbreak was expected by Ebola researchers. Not the timing, just that an attenuated strain would show up and have the chance to hit population centers.
And next time around with an even “weaker” strain that takes longer to express itself the world could see something that rivals the black plague. No wonder ‘Mother Abigail’ thought it was just a matter of time when one of these diseases plus fast global travel would result in a near extinction event.
Looks like the radical environmentalists could get their wish.
“When viruses attenuate they do so through mutation.”
I’ll watch you two debate this point. With any luck I’ll learn something.
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