Posted on 06/02/2011 8:32:08 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
06/02/2011
Mutant Bacteria
E. Coli Outbreak Linked to Aggressive New Strain
As the E. coli outbreak continues to ravage Germany and other parts of Europe, the World Health Organization said Thursday that the aggressive intestinal bacteria is a new strain never seen before. Meanwhile fears of the illness prompted Russia to ban imports of vegetables from the EU. Info
Researchers are still desperately searching for the origin of the E. coli bacteria that has left 18 dead and infected hundreds of others in Germany and Europe. The number of cases within Germany continues to rise, with up to 2,000 reported cases of infection, several hundred more than at the beginning of the week. Following the death of another victim in Hamburg overnight, the World Health Organization announced that preliminary genetic sequencing had revealed the deadly strain is likely a mutant form of two separate E. coli bacteria that is new to scientists.
The "unique strain has never been isolated from patients before" and has "various characteristics that make it more virulent and toxin-producing," WHO food safety expert Hilde Kruse told news agency AP.
The mutant bacteria was identified through cooperation between scientists at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) and the Beijing Genomic Institute. "This strain is only a very distant relative of conventional EHEC bacteria," said UKE bacteriologist Holger Rohde.
The newly discovered enterohemorrhagic strain of the bacterium Escherichia coli (EHEC) causes watery or bloody diarrhea. In severe cases, EHEC also attacks the blood, kidneys and brain, causing a life-threatening complication known as hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS). Thousands of people in nine European countries have been infected by the bacteria, with nearly 500 developing the HUS complication.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
The $64,000 question, natural mutation, or lab made?
Fecally delivered suggesting terrorism.
Mutant strain suggesting weaponization.
From Germany to the US Congress —
NO ONE in government appears to care.
there is one conclusion:
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Seems to me this is what happens when you let the great unwashed into your country in large numbers, and you put them to work in the food supply chain.
One statement they can make with certitude...
Well, the 0bamas were just making the grand tour over there. The lizard men and the Wookies have different kinds of bacteria than we humans.
I say the WHO look to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. for answers.
Just another reason to have your own a backyard garden.
It's Captain Trips: The Walking Dude!
This is the result of two huge problems. First, is the forced Multiculturalization of our societies. There is some genuinely scary, highly contagoius stuff floating free in this world. What protects us is geographic isolation. Back in an undergraduate biochem lab class, every one was comparing who had the longest trip back to school after a vacation. The winner was a kid from the boondocks in Pakistan. After his motorbike ride to relatives in the city, he had 30 something hours of plane rides to get the the US.
Go to any major college, and you will have kids from rural areas of China, India, Pakistan, Serbia, Poland, Africa, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, and every other corner of the globe. All will carry with them, somewhere between 40-100 bacterial species, in large numbers, and another 1000-2000 in small numbers. All are crammed together, highly stressed, sleep deprived, on a poor diet, and not prone to follow good hygiene practices. Add in viruses and Yeasts, and the fact that the kid from Gong Dong Province spent the last two weeks sleeping in his father’s booth at the animal market to help out with sales, with a bunch of animals from the jungle whose names you can’t pronounce in cages all around him, and you have an immuno-compromised group of humans being mixed with bacterial species which they didn’t evolve to function with effectively.
The second problem is that a lot of agricultural enterprises are exchanging good animal husbandry for Antibiotics in the animal’s food. From Chickens, to Cows, our animal food products are way over medicated.
Already we are hearing this strain came from Africa. If we could track the genes for the Antibiotic resistance, they will likely have originated at some farm where the cows and chickens were prophylactic medicated with Antibiotics, to make up for bad husbandry. Where they met the bacteria, was a multicultural society.
Unfortunately, we will have a lot of natural selection ahead of us as we mix all of our humans, who are immunologically naive to the microbes of the world, with other people from all corners of the globe, carrying those microbes. Add in how pervasive genes for Antibiotic resistance are today, and there will undoubtedly be some ugliness.
And a lot of unnatural selection...
E. Coli? More like The Runnin' Dude...
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