[Strategerist]

I heard a local report that it had genes from human, bird, and swine flu. How does such a thing occur? Is this Bio terror?

This is nothing unusual for influenza. It's constantly mutating, moving to different hosts, picking up genes from each.

Given that this has happened dozens of times before naturally, there's no particular reason for this to have bene bio terror.

I've noticed on all portions of the political spectrum people have a difficult time believing anything really bad can happen without a human cause, though.

[justsaynomore]

This is nothing unusual for influenza.

That's not exactly right. Double combinations happen, but are not as common between species (e.g., one of the reasons bird flu hasn't taken off, hasn't found a good human flu receptor). Triple species combinations are rare. This is a triple combination with two different Swine flus (from two Asia and Eurasia), a NORTH AMERICAN bird flu (don't know the type yet) and a human flu. This is a big deal. My bet is if you walked up to any virologist and told them this combination they would opt that it was lab created rather than natural occurance.

[blam]

"Scientists have long been concerned that a new flu virus could launch a worldwide pandemic of a killer disease. A new virus could evolve when different flu viruses infect a pig, a person or a bird, mingling their genetic material. The resulting hybrid could spread quickly because people would have no natural defenses against it."

"Still, flu experts were concerned but not alarmed about the latest outbreak."

"We've seen swine influenza in humans over the past several years, and in most cases, it's come from direct pig contact. This seems to be different," said Dr. Arnold Monto, a flu expert with the University of Michigan."

There's something about the way this was said: "This seems to be different,