SARS Epidemic May Reemerge, CDC Director Warns

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Like deadly flu epidemics of the past, SARS may reemerge later this year as a global health threat, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday.

Dr. Julie Gerberding pointed out that infectious diseases like SARS and monkeypox are spread around the world by travelers or by trade in exotic animals.

"This is the new normal: emerging infectious diseases ... that create immediate global concerns because of the movement of people and animals," Gerberding said in a speech to the American Medical Association's annual meeting.

Gerberding compared SARS to flu epidemics early in the last century that appeared to subside, only to erupt again with the change of seasons and kill millions.

The World Health Organization said this week the worst was over in the battle against SARS and lifted a travel warning for Taiwan, leaving Beijing as the only place with an advisory in force.

But the United Nations agency said health authorities must stay alert for fresh outbreaks of the disease that killed almost 800 people and infected about 8,500 since it emerged late last year in southern China.

Gerberding said the number of cases was "definitely dwindling" but the Northern Hemisphere's fall and winter could witness another outbreak.

"Our next priority is to develop a rapid diagnostic test," she said. "We now know there are milder forms of the illness where people may not have symptoms. What we don't know is if these people can transmit the virus."

The monkeypox outbreak in the U.S. Midwest this spring caught health authorities by surprise, she said, and showed how the movement of people and animals around the globe posed health risks. There have been roughly 80 non-fatal human cases so far traced to pet prairie dogs, with the infection traced to a Gambian rat imported from Africa.

She said no new human cases of the deadly West Nile virus appeared in the United States so far this spring, though the CDC was tracking bird and mosquito virus carriers and expected the deadly illness to reappear this summer. Last year, there were more than 4,000 human cases and 284 deaths.

It was a tape.

Henry Niman says in one article explaining some mess, that he was/is being hacked-threatened,yada,yada.

I am not quite brave enough to leave my name and number on a tape.

If, by chance,he isn't what he is supposed to be, and a cover?(black gov contract?)is in place to give him a cover,I would rather find out another way than have him call me back and I ask him,what, why the hell are you so strange?

I doubt that a currently employed person in a hospital could have such an agressive stock/company medical presence.

For fun spend some hours searching this guy.

He is never quite there.

All his postings are never relating to his supposed work:Surgery instructor,bioengineering,burns,yada,yada.

The education of an Internet enthusiast

In less than a year, Henry Niman says he went from the amateur web site host of "Links to Ligand" to the target of a troubling smear campaign.

Eight months ago, the Internet and Henry Niman were one more happy match made in cyberspace. The 49-year-old Pittsburgh biochemist, who helped found a company that was later merged into Ligand Pharmaceuticals, used the Internet for both investment research and communication with other small investors through his "Links to Ligand" web page. Inspired by the page he put together for his daughter's soccer team, Niman lovingly put together an extensive Web site on Ligand, including links to pharmaceutical trials, news releases, and analyst reports on the San Diego company. In addition, he was an active participant in on-line investment forums such as Silicon Investor, Yahoo! and the newsgroup misc.invest.stocks. The enthusiastic Niman argued persuasively and persistently for long-term investment in the company.

But subsequently, Niman has experienced the dark side of the Web – a side that includes forgery, harassment, and possible manipulation of Ligand stock.

Beginning last March, Niman started getting "flamed" or attacked in messages from other posters on web sites. That's somewhat par for the course in chat rooms. But then Niman says forged messages began to appear on Yahoo! under the moniker "Henry Niman, Ph.D." requesting child pornography. As months went by, the attacks got nastier, following Niman into the Usenet forum, misc.stocks.invest and stock chat room Raging Bull. Somebody joined Silicon Investor with a version of his name and identical biographical data, although SI canceled the account after being notified by Niman. Niman found himself under siege by groups of people with hard-to-trace pseudonyms and no history of posting in Ligand chat rooms. Unlike the prompt attention he got from SI, multiple complaints to Yahoo! had no effect.

"I think I sent them five different messages," Niman says of his attempt to stop the harassment on Yahoo! " I thought that part would be really easy and obvious to them. I gave them 30 examples."

Meanwhile, Ligand's stock and warrants kept dropping, although analysts and the company say there was no news that logically should have spurred such a downward spiral. On August 12, for example, Ligand closed on a $30 million merger with Seragen, which resulted in the creation of some 1.9 million shares of Ligand. But considering Ligand's market capitalization of approximately $370 million and 38 million outstanding shares of stock, that was a relatively small amount and there was no indication from the volume that those new shareholders were simply dumping Ligand.

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