My grandmother was 8 years old at the time of this epidemic. She is alive today. Maybe she's passed along some sort of immunity to "killer" flu bugs. I can only hope. She has lived an incredible life!!
Interesting idea, vaccines produced by researching natural immunities.
There are fragments of the 1918 virus around, but apparently not the whole virus.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1012367/posts?q=1&&page=51
"... gene fragments of the 1918 flu virus extracted from preserved tissue of two soldiers who died of it and from an Inuit woman who also died from the flu and was buried in the Alaskan permafrost."
I had one old great aunt, who survived this flu...tho her husband and very young child died because of it...my aunt tho, went on to live to be 102 years old...she died a number of years ago...
I saw a PBS program several years ago about the so called “Spanish Flu’.
I was truly amazing to me to learn how bad it really was. You would see a healthy looking neighbor pass you by on the street one day and a just a day or two later find you’d learn he was dead.
Philadelphia was one American city particularly hard hit. There were not enough coffins or mortuaries to keep up with the demand. Dead bodies lied in their homes for days and days.
And the epidemic may have even ended WWI earlier than the hostilities might have. I’ve read that more soldiers actually succumb to the flu or it’s complications than actually died as a result of enemy fire.
But for some strange reason, perhaps the culture at the time, there seemed to be a national if not world wide amnesia about what happened – people at the time did not want to talk about it later and thus later generations didn’t learn how bad it really was.
This flu, unlike most others since, took the young adults and healthiest among the population and just why is still a mystery that haunts scientists even today. So hopefully this research can help. I think we are complacent to think, even with our medical advances, that something like this can’t happen today.
Think about our big cities and the large number of working poor and immigrant populations who might not seek medical attention until it’s too late added to the speed of international travel. Yes we’ve had some false alarms and things blown out of proportion but I do think that a potential killer lies in wait.
Like Hurricane Katrina, it’s not a matter of if but when. The good news is we are hopefully better prepared to contain the eventual pandemic now more than ever before.
ping.
Ping.
The results of a study on the 1918 Influenza Virus were released earlier this week. I will try to summarize as best I can since this has long been an interest of mine.
Mice were infected by innoculation into their nasal passages with one of four virus strains:
1. A common Texas A influenza virus from 1991.
2. Two of the RNA genes of the 1918 virus.
3. Five of the RNA genes of the 1918 virus.
4. All eight of the RNA genes of the 1918 virus.
The mice were culled on days 1, 2, and 5 and the lung tissue was extracted and treated to inactivate the virus. The lung tissue was then examined.
The lung tissue from groups 1-3 showed a normal immune response that would not have been fatal. The lung tissue from group 4 that was infected with the complete virus showed an uncontrolled immune response that destroyed the host tissue.
All testing was performed in a Biohazard Level 3 laboratory at the CDC.
It is now hypothesized that the virulence of this virus is due to synergistic activity by the combination of the 8 RNA genes which cause an overwhelming immune response that destroys the host tissues. In other words, the body destroys its own tissue in response to this infection.
If you would like to read THE authoritative text on the subject of the 1918 Pandemic and the quest to track down the organism responsible it is FLU by Gina Kolata.
Whole virus was recovered from the lung tissue of an Alaskan Inupiat woman who died in the Pandemic in Lutheran Mission (now Brevig Mission) in NW Alaska. A retired pathologist from the Bay area of CA went there in the 1990's and got permission from the village elders to excavate the mass grave. The specimens were retrieved from the lung tissue of the woman who was buried at the bottom of the grave and had been frozen for over 80 years. These frozen specimens ewere preserved and sent to Jeffrey Taubenberger, M.D. at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda, MD where the genome was mapped.
Ongoing research is occuring at the AFIP, the University of Washington in Seattle, and the CDC in Atlanta.
Those of you familiar with Alaska probably are unaware that the village of Eklutna just north of Anchorage west of the Glenn Highway was founded in 1920 as an orphanage for Native children who lost their families in the Great Pandemic.
May Godspeed be with these researchers to help us learn to cope with the inevitable next influenza pandemic.
There was an aunt of mine who died of this flu. Her cause of death is listed as consumption..which was, as I understand from listening to my surviving aunts and uncles, was that she died by virtually drowning in her own phlem. The rest actually had that flu and made it through just fine and two aunts later became nurses. I remember them talking of the awful task it was helping their mother who was trying to hold their sister so that she could try and cough all that crap up. They also said that she was nearly pure blue in color from lack of air. There was no antibiodics in those days and both these aunts said that if they'd had any that it would have helped and she would have made it. Both these fine Ol Ladys took care of many a boy who came back from WW2 with infections and watched as the miracle of penicillin healed those boys. No way would they have believed that antibiodics would become a problem these days because of its overuse in medicine.
One theory, and just a theory, about why the flu epidemic spread so fast around the world was that it was at the end of the war. Aspirin had just been introduced (according to the article) and had been used on the battlefield; returning soldiers were bringing the new "wonder drug" to the attention of their friends and families all over the world.
When a person is first taking an infectious disease, the body naturally produces an initial rise in temperature (a fever) in order to kill the bacteria causing the disease. The theory was that taking aspirin in order to bring down the initial fever associated with the flu caused the bacteria to survive and grow in huge numbers over the next few days and ultimately quickly killing a person as it regrouped in the system.
Upon reading this, I remembered that I saw a program on PBS concerning similar research done in England on the black death (bubonic plague). It was extremely interesting.
Here's a synopsis:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_plague/index.html
Really belated ping to flu research...
My grandfather is in his mid-90s and living in New Jersey. He didn't lose any immediate relatives to the flu, but perhaps he or a family member experienced the disease. I called my father and hopefully this can do some good.