Posted on 01/08/2008 1:58:39 PM PST by blam
Flu deaths run in the family
08 January 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Everyone gets the flu - but it seems some people are more likely to die from it than others.
Lisa Albright and colleagues at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City looked at death certificates and family records going back 100 years. Nearly 5000 people were said to have died of flu, 2000 of them in the 1918 pandemic.
Albright's team found that blood relatives of flu victims were more likely to die than non-relatives - even during different flu outbreaks - and the risk was greater the more closely related they were. Siblings were 74 per cent more likely to die of flu than unrelated people, and blood uncles and first cousins of flu victims were 22 and 16 per cent more likely (The Journal of Infectious Diseases, DOI: 10.1086/524064).
Victims' spouses were also more likely to die, but probably because they lived in the same house. Relatives of the spouse were not at increased risk, though they probably visited the household as often as the victim's relatives. This suggests a genetic component. The team is now tracking relatives of people who died recently to see if they too are at increased risk, and if flu vaccination helps.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Interesting article, but I’m surprised the New Scientist didn’t relate this to climate change. I’ve just allowed my subscription to lapse due to the fact that any articles covering other than physics appear to have very little science and very much politics...and climate change is always lurking very much in the foreground. Beware. British liberals are in full flower in this mag. If it ain’t physics, fuggetabowdit!!
Read Peter D’Andamo The Bloodtype Diet
LOL. Scientific American just offered me a 'cheap' professional rate to re-subscribe to their magazine. I said: "Nope!! I'm still not going to support anyone who spouts leftist politics." (That's what I told them when I cancelled 3-4 years ago.)
We let our subscription lapse years ago. So many scientists condemn conservatives, religious believers, pro-lifers and/or creationists as mindless yahoos, but at the same time they seem to go out of their way to alienate them and destroy any common ground.
Conservative pro-life Christians can actually like reading about medicine, astrophysics, nanotechnology, informatics, whatever...if they didn’t get kicked in the teeth every few pages.
And then the scientists call believers anti-science.
Actions (and the lack of them) have consequences.
Even in the days before running water, there were marked differences in the way individuals and family groups approached personal cleanliness, and those habits were generally maintained throughout individual and to a lesser extent, extended family groups.
That peer pressure cannot be underestimated, nor can the basic sanitation know-how of grampa making the kids put the outhouse away from the well or down hill from the spring and away from the creek.
Similarly, dietary expectations and preferences would tend to follow familial lines as well. (Every young man wants a woman who can cook as well as Momma or Grandma, or at least it used to be that way.)
There may be a genetic factor as well, (nature or nurture?), but I am betting the biggest factors are behavioural ones which did not usually stray far from the behaviours people were raised with.
Ditto for National Geographic.
The last few years have gotten really bad. “We’re Doomed, We’re Doomed and it’s all out fault” every issue.
Not going to renew when it comes due.
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This possibility is nothing to sneeze at. Thanks Blam. |
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That’s about the most ridiculous bunch of fuff I’ve read all week and completely unrelated to the topic of the article.
I’m glad I could make your week. Sure don’t read much, do you?
My paternal grandparents lost 3 kids in the 1918 pandemic. Two survived. When my Dad was born in 25, they named him after his deceased brother.
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