Fresh doubt cast on Sars cause

BBC ^ | April 23, 2003

[Dog Gone]

Sars is not under control in Canada

The virus pinpointed as the likely cause of the killer Sars illness may not be responsible - most Canadian victims don't carry it.

So far, more than 4,000 people worldwide have fallen ill with Sars, which kills in 4% of cases.

In Canada, more than 300 are either "probable" or "suspected" of having sars, and 15 are reported to have died.

The outbreak centres around the city of Toronto.

The World Health Organization says it is reasonably certain that Sars is caused by infection with a new strain of coronavirus.

However, Canadian scientists have carried out hundreds of tests on samples from patients with suspected or probable cases of Sars in Canada.

They found only 40% of people carried the new strain of coronavirus.

In addition they found evidence of the strain in healthy people enlisted as "controls" for the experiment.

Nine out of ten

The results, from the Canadian National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, completely contradict those from scientists in Hong Kong, where more than 100 people have so far died from the illness.

The Coronavirus: Does it cause Sars?

The Hong Kong team found that 90% of probable Sars cases harboured the coronavirus, and found no trace of it in healthy controls.

Researchers around the world are scrambling to provide diagnostic tests and treatments, and even working towards vaccines, on the basis that coronavirus is the root cause.

If it is not actually caused by coronavirus, then these efforts would be in vain.

Many experts believe it will be some years before an effective vaccine for this new strain of coronavirus is available.

Dr Frank Plummer, who led the Canadian research, said: "There remain some very puzzling things we are finding.

"I'm still not convinced it's coronavirus - although it could well be, but the data is not conclusive."

[aristeides]

Mark Steyn: The system infected us.

[InterceptPoint]

Doubt? How can there be any doubt?

ido_now: At last the voice of reason rises at Free Republic.

This SARS thing looks a lot more like a PR stunt than an epidemic or pandemic. You are right on about the large number of people who die annually from pneumonia. This looks and smells like the AIDS community looking for employment and funding.

Just a reminder for those who are looking for the science (and not the junk science) behind all of the SARS claims. Robert Koch, established an experimental procedure in 1876 to prove the germ theory of disease. This scientific procedure is known as Koch's postulates and is the accepted standard for defining a communicable disease.

• the causative agent must be present in every case of the disease and must not be present in healthy animals.

• the pathogen must be isolated from the diseased host animal and must be grown in pure culture.

• the same disease must be produced when microbes from the pure culture are inoculated into healthy susceptible animals.

• the same pathogen must be recoverable once again from this artificially infected animal and it must be able to be grown in pure culture.

So when you read that the virus has been isolated and is "for sure" the coronavirus ask yourself if Koch's postulates have been satisfied. If they haven't I for one would question the validity of the claim. If they have, I will stop my bellyaching.

[ido_now]

ANOTHER PIECE OF THE PUZZLE ......

LONDON (Reuters Health) - A leading British virologist offered reassurance on Friday that the SARS was not infectious enough to cause a world pandemic.

This virus is not highly infectious. It is a plodder like mumps, not a greyhound like measles," said John Oxford, professor of virology at Queen Mary School of Medicine in London.

With a "greyhound" virus, escaping infection is very difficult. But with plodder viruses, someone could walk 100 times into the same room as an infected person and still not be infected, he added in an interview.

If the SARS virus was highly infectious, there would have been many more cases than the few thousand so far reported in China. "I don't think there is any evidence of mutation," he said.

Oxford, an expert on the influenza virus, said SARS should certainly not be compared with the Spanish influenza pandemic that killed millions after the end of the first world war in 1918.

He said Chinese government measures, such as closing schools, to stop the virus spreading were "very positive" but the situation outside South East Asia was different and did not require special containment measures.

[_Jim]

     If it actually does "get out" in full force.

Referencing stage number 3 as contained here:

      http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/898791/posts?page=9#9

it's *doubtful* that would occur now ...

[Allan]

...transporting infected patients distances as great as 30 miles.

What was the rationale for this and who made this decision?
Health management bureaucrats, maybe?

I don't know and likely we shall never know.
Everyone in Canada
(media included)
continues to tell us
what a wonderful job the authorities have done.

The fact that infected patients were transported to many different hospitals
(including one near where I live and where my son was born)
has not been reported on the CBC
(as if one would expect that)
nor on the local TV stations
nor, to my knowledge, in any newspaper
except the National Post
and even there
it only is mentioned in the fine print
on the back pages
of a long article.

Please read the Steyn article to which I pinged you
for further 'amusing' details.