CDC To mix avian, human flu viruses in pandemic study(2004 article)

Center For Infectious Disease Research And Policy ^ | 1/14/2004 | Robert Roos

[America2012]

Jan 14, 2004 (CIDRAP News) – One of the worst fears of infectious disease experts is that the H5N1 avian influenza virus now circulating in parts of Asia will combine with a human-adapted flu virus to create a deadly new flu virus that could spread around the world.

That could happen, scientists predict, if someone who is already infected with an ordinary flu virus contracts the avian virus at the same time. The avian virus has already caused at least 48 confirmed human illness cases in Asia, of which 35 have been fatal. The virus has shown little ability to spread from person to person, but the fear is that a hybrid could combine the killing power of the avian virus with the transmissibility of human flu viruses.

Now, rather than waiting to see if nature spawns such a hybrid, US scientists are planning to try to breed one themselves—in the name of preparedness.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will soon launch experiments designed to combine the H5N1 virus and human flu viruses and then see how the resulting hybrids affect animals. The goal is to assess the chances that such a "reassortant" virus will emerge and how dangerous it might be.

CDC officials confirmed the plans for the research as described recently in media reports, particularly in a Canadian Press (CP) story.Two ways to make hybrids

The plans call for trying two methods to create hybrid viruses, CDC spokesman David Daigle told CIDRAP News via e-mail. One is to infect cells in a laboratory tissue culture with H5N1 and human flu viruses at the same time and then watch to see if they mix. For the human virus, investigators will use A (H3N2), the strain that has caused most human flu cases in recent years, according to the CP report.

The other method is reverse genetics—assembling a new virus with sets of genes from the H5N1 and H3N2 viruses. Reverse genetics has already been used to create H5N1 candidate vaccines in several laboratories, according to Daigle. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) said recently it would soon launch a clinical trial of one of those vaccines.

Of the two methods, the co-infection approach was described as slower and more laborious, though closer to what happens in nature.

Any viable viruses that emerge from these processes will be seeded into animals that are considered good models for testing how flu viruses behave in humans, according to Daigle. The aim will be to observe whether the animals get sick and whether infected animals can infect others.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has been "pleading" for laboratories to do this research, because it could provide some evidence to back up the agency's warnings about the risk of a flu pandemic, according to the CP report.

Klaus Stohr, head of the WHO's global influenza program, was quoted as saying that if none of the hybrids caused disease, the agency might be inclined to dial down its level of concern. But if the experiments produce highly transmissible and pathogenic viruses, the agency will be more worried, he said.

Safety precautions

Because of the obvious risks in creating viruses with the potential to spark a pandemic, the work will be done in a biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) laboratory at the CDC in Atlanta, Daigle told CIDRAP News.

"We recognize that there is concern by some over this type of work. This concern may be heightened by reports of recent lab exposures in other lab facilities," he said. "But CDC has an incredible record in lab safety and is taking very strict precautions."

Daigle said the US Department of Agriculture requires that highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) viruses be treated as "Select Agents" and that research on them must be done in BSL-3 labs with "enhancements." These include "special provisions to protect both laboratory workers and the environment."

BSL-3 is the second highest level of laboratory biosecurity. It is used for work with pathogens that may cause serious or potentially lethal disease if inhaled, such as tuberculosis or St. Louis encephalitis, according to the CDC.

CDC experiments with HPAI viruses have to pass reviews by the agency's Institutional Biosafety Committee and Animal Care and Use Committee, Daigle said. The facilities involved are inspected by the USDA and the CDC's Office of Safety and Health, and staff members who work with Select Agents require special clearance.

It's been done before

The upcoming experiments will not break entirely new ground for the CDC, the CP story revealed. The agency already has made hybrid viruses with H5N1 samples isolated from patients in Hong Kong in 1997, when the virus first caused human disease.

The results of that research have not yet been published, and the CDC has said little about them. In the CP report, Dr. Nancy Cox, head of the CDC's influenza branch, commented only, "Some gene combinations could be produced and others could not."

Daigle added little to that. He said, "The reassortment work with the 1997 isolate was intermittently interrupted with SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] and then the 2004 H5N1 outbreak. We are currently concentrating our efforts on understanding the pathogenicity of the 2004 strains (non-reassortants) in mammalian models."

He said the CDC hopes to prepare a report on that research "in the near future."

[America2012]

Now read this;

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,517640,00.html

Health officials are investigating a never-before-seen form of the flu that combines pig, bird and human viruses and which has infected seven people in California and Texas. All the victims recovered, but the cases are a growing medical mystery because it's unclear how they caught the virus.

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This pandemic sounds like the work of a nutjob scientist like the one at the end of the movie "Twelve Monkeys".

[The Sons of Liberty]

This pandemic sounds like the work of a nutjob scientist like the one at the end of the movie "Twelve Monkeys".

I don't care what Janet "The Dyke" Napolitano says, I think Dr. Al Queda cooked this virus up - probably in Iran.

[Larousse2]

I agree with you on the nutjob scientist!

[Larousse2]

PING!

[jiggyboy]

They were also curious little cats in 2005, “resurrecting” the 1918 Spanish Flu virus as well.

[Big_Monkey]

"This pandemic sounds like the work of a nutjob scientist like the one at the end of the movie "Twelve Monkeys".

Probably not. But, the US is frequently criticized because of our industrialized farming practices. But, it those industrialized farm practices that does quite a bit to separate and quarantine these food-stock species like chickens and pigs from ever co-mingling. Our pigs and chickens are by-in-large raised indoors, away from other possibly contagious pigs or animals.

But, in places in rural Mexico where people literally live right next to or even with chickens (as is very prevalent in Latin America) or pigs. In other words, they create a petri dish with humans, pigs and birds that begs for these viral mutations to happen.

[wolfcreek]

“The new Mexican Swine Flu has elements of DNA from the following: avian flu, human flu Type A, human flu Type B, Asian swine flu, and European swine flu. A strange combination never seen before and having less than 1/10% chance of being a natural event. Human and animal viruses from four or more continents suddenly recombine in a new flu during a non-flu season that spreads from human-to-human with a 10% fatality rating.”

http://www.rense.com/general85/BIO.HTM

IMO, (and I'm no scientist or doctor) this is NOT naturally occurring.

[gaijin]

MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu MexiFlu

[skippermd]

I Posted this comment literally minutes before I saw this article, and now I am really impressed: I compared the genomic sequence of the swine flu to previous influenza strains and found the best concordance is with H5N1 and H3N2:

“These are the genomic sequences of the viruses isolated so far: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/FLU/SwineFlu.html

I did a comparison of sequences for two major proteins of the swine flu strains isolated in California (ACP41932) and Texas (ACP41934).

I was shocked at the results: The closest matches to the Polymerase/hemagglutinin proteins are from the following accession numbers: ABM 92273, ACI06178, ABR87650 and ABR 87645. You can look up the origin of these viruses by entering the accession numbers in the search line on this page:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/protein

But the summary is that they are isolated at either the CDC, the USNavy research unit in Nasr, Cairo, the US AF institute for operational health in TX, or the Pasteur institute in Cambodia. The polymerase protein is from Indonesian H5N1 and the Hemagglutinin is from H3N2 or H1N1 north american strains.

I did all of this using the NIH/NCBI website which anyone could use. If this were truly a naturally occurring virus as a result of antigenic drift, the lab strains and the strain we are seeing would not be so closely related because it rapidly mutates.

This is scary because in all my training I cannot think of a reason someone would make a virus like this. It is not highly deadly, and it is sensitive to Oseltamivir. My suspicion is that this may be a very unstable virus and it will mutate into a more dangerous virus as it blows through the population. And obtw I do have a degree in Biochemistry, I am not trying to feed conspiracy, just passing along information.”

[Just mythoughts]

What exactly does your post mean in layman's terms?

[Just mythoughts]

This thread caught my attention. Particularly post number 9, but I am not trained to fully understand what is said. It sounds fairly clear to me but it is disconcerting and I do not want to jump to conclusions.

[skippermd]

The closest related viruses to the mexican swine flu are viruses isolated in labs in research facilities. If it were a completely “naturally occuring” virus, the lab strains and the one we are seeing would be significantly different.

Think of it as the more time the virus is in the “wild” the more mutated it becomes, therefore it doesn’t make sense that it is so similar to lab strains.

Essentially, someone took sequences from the H5N1 strain and H3N2 and others and combined them to create this virus.

[Just mythoughts]

Thank you. That is what I thought I read. And because of the sinister implications I did not want to jump to conclusions.

[Just mythoughts]

Check out posts 9 and 12. What these doctors are saying on the other thread makes sense. A trial run?

[Just mythoughts]

I found comments on this thread... 9 and 12 to be an interesting take and does give credibility to what the ‘doctors’ have to say. But the hype does give an escape hatch of sorts to not deal with how this perfect storm erupted out of nowhere.

[Just mythoughts]

Check out this thread.... pay particular interest to posts 9 and 12.

[Polarik]

He said the CDC hopes to prepare a report on that research "in the near future."

We're seeing the fruits of that research all over the world. This virus was man-made as i've been saying all along.

[BTW, thanks for posting this. I just found the source this morning.]

[azishot]

I, too believe it was a man made virus...can’t prove it and wouldn’t even know how to. Just a gut feeling.

However, my family has left it up to me to follow this (they’re somewhat skeptical) and let them know when it’s time to panic. If I see FReepers panicing, I’ll pass it on. Until then, I’m watching this closely.

[Spunky]

From a BBC article of September 28, 2006

"Scientists in the US have reconstructed the H1N1 virus in a bid to better understand how it became such an effective killer - and to also bolster knowledge in the face of current H5N1 bird flu threat"

Link for full article: 1918 flu virus's secrets revealed

This flu is very suspicious.

Also I remember about 3 months back an article posted on FreeRepublic that warned against a flu strain coming later than the normal flu season that was not the strain that the injection was made up for. Does anybody else remember that article or where to find it? I wonder how they knew it was coming?

[ConservativeMan55]

bttt