Posted on 09/30/2014 9:04:16 PM PDT by Marie
Things seem to be looking up for rats. After more than 500 years, rats may be off the hook for causing the Black Death, the horrible plague that claimed up to 60% of the European population. In virtually every textbook the Bubonic Plague, which is spread by flea-ridden rats, is named as the culprit behind the chaos. But mounting evidence suggests that an Ebola-like virus was the actual cause of the Black Death and the sporadic outbreaks that occurred in the following 300 years.
At the forefront of this theory are two researchers from the University of Liverpool, Dr. Christopher Duncan and Dr. Susan Scott. Let's look at six small pieces of this puzzle.
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
“Black Death ... can we say that?”
No, you may not. It’s racist! Now.
Say three Hail Barrys and ten rounds of
Barnacle Bill the Sailor.
The author is a high school student. Maybe brilliant but she doesn’t seem to present much evidence.
Yeah. I’m getting that impression. *sigh*
There’s another one at post 22. ;-)
#5 seems interesting to me, too. I’m less sure about #1, and the argument that the fleas only jump off the rats after the rats die, to dine on humans. At least in my experience, fleas will jump right off a healthy cat or dog onto a bed, a human, the floor, etc.
(banging head on desk)
The writer was profiling a book, “Return of the Black Death: The World’s Greatest Serial Killer” by Scott and Duncan. I’m sure there’s some serious evidence in their 318 page book.
No. Wikipedia isn’t great, but for this it suffices: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubonic_plague Bubonic plague still happens - go to the link for pics. If caught early, it is treatable with antibiotics. Why? Because it is caused by bacteria. Ebola is a virus. Totally different.
Yes but it is still a very well written article. And virology is not your typical teenage pursuit.
Correct.
It just Nature its not like it something reliable like like its The Sun or The News or The Enquirer. Most of these FReeper have publish dozens of article in far more prestigious venues.
Hmmm. After re-reading the article and then your post, maybe part of the Black Death was Ebola or something else besides bubonic plague? That at lease seems possible.
Why does the CDC own a patent on Ebola ‘invention?’
http://www.naturalnews.com/046290_ebola_patent_vaccines_profit_motive.html#
So, I'll punt. What actually happened was likely never to be known.
#2 sounds absurd
Black death was traced genetically to a bacteria...
Not a virus..
Sorry, a correction - “the disease does not necessarily kill off the host population or it would NOT still be a plague reservoir 100+ years after it (the plague) came here.” I should proofread better, apologies.
Well, it appears to be a slam dunk. :)
At the time that the book was written (2005), there hadn’t been a lot of good research done on genetic material from the mass graves from the black death. In 2010, a very detailed study came to light.
Since then, there have been additional studies. For example, see Haensch S, Bianucci R, Signoli M, Rajerison M, Schultz M, Kacki S, Vermunt M, Weston DA, Hurst D, Achtman M, Carniel E, Bramanti B (2010). “Distinct Clones of Yersinia pestis Caused the Black Death”. In Besansky, Nora J. PLoS Pathogens 6 (10): e1001134. Try
http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.ppat.1001134
(or http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20949072 [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951374/]).
They studied bodies from plague pits in multiple areas, as well as controls, and found the Y. pestis indications in plague-pit samples at multiple locations. As the authors state:
“In summary, two independent methods demonstrate that humans buried in mass graves that were historically and contextually associated with the Black Death and its resurgences, were consistently infected by Y. pestis in southern, central and northern Europe. Thus, the second pandemic was probably caused in large part by Y. pestis.”
Yup. Just found the research that was published in 2010. The book this article was based on was published in 2004/5.
True...works the same in a virus like ebola in Africa.
They have found it carried by bats and some primates but it does not kill them very frequently.
My own impression is that it’s carried, like a lot of other diseases by bats, in the case of ebola, but they have yet to prove this.
In any case, the disease ebola or a closely related strain like Marburg has been around for thousands of years, so it cannot be killing the hosts..
My idea is to go into a secluded area with some friends and a few beautiful girls and tell stories about putting the Devil in Hell till the plague passes. Kind of like what Bocccaccio did in THE DECAMERON.
On second thought forget the friends, bring on the girls!
But at my age, after I drop a blue pill, I will have forgotten why they were here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decameron
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