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>Unconfirmed reports said that she had been given sick leave after taking care of a Taiwanese businessman surnamed Chin after he turned up ill after coming back from mainland China.

A computer wiz
named Bill Joy speculated
about the dangers

of systems that do
self-replication. His thoughts
did not have pleasant

conclusions. Slow and
steady wins the race. Here's an
excerpt, and the link:

"It is most of all the power of destructive self-replication in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR) that should give us pause. Self-replication is the modus operandi of genetic engineering, which uses the machinery of the cell to replicate its designs, and the prime danger underlying gray goo in nanotechnology. Stories of run-amok robots like the Borg, replicating or mutating to escape from the ethical constraints imposed on them by their creators, are well established in our science fiction books and movies. It is even possible that self-replication may be more fundamental than we thought, and hence harder - or even impossible - to control. A recent article by Stuart Kauffman in Nature titled "Self-Replication: Even Peptides Do It" discusses the discovery that a 32-amino-acid peptide can "autocatalyse its own synthesis." We don't know how widespread this ability is, but Kauffman notes that it may hint at "a route to self-reproducing molecular systems on a basis far wider than Watson-Crick base-pairing."" [Why the future doesn't need us -- Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species. By Bill Joy -- WIRED, Issue 8.04 - Apr 2000]

U.S. Flu Deaths Up Sharply Since 1970s, Researchers Say
Wednesday, January 08, 2003

CHICAGO — Influenza has surpassed AIDS
as a lethal killer and contributes to

an average 36,000 annual U.S. deaths,

largely because of a vulnerable aging

population for whom the vaccine is

often ineffective, government research shows.

The U.S. flu-related death toll surged
fourfold from 16,263 in 1976-77 to

64,684 in 1998-99, the Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention

reported in Wednesday's Journal of the
American Medical Association. Those

numbers average out to 16,000 more

deaths yearly than the previous

estimate of 20,000.

Health and Human Services Secretary

Tommy Thompson said the news "that

influenza may be taking an even larger
toll than we have realized"

underscores the importance of flu

shots, especially for older people.

Drug breakthroughs in the mid-1990s

helped reduce U.S. AIDS deaths from

51,000 in 1995 to about 15,000 in

2001. But the main weapon doctors have
against flu -- a vaccine -- has proven
disappointingly ineffective in the

most susceptible population: people 65
and older.

Older people are more prone to flu

complications yet only about 65

percent of them get vaccinated. The

annual shots do not protect aging

immune systems as well as they do

younger ones.

Annual flu shots have been recommended
for people 65 and older since the

1960s and for those 50 and older since
2000.

The flu death toll pales in comparison
to that of the worldwide influenza

epidemic of 1918, which killed more

than 20 million people, including

500,000 Americans.

But the new numbers frustrate public

health experts who had hoped the

development of flu vaccine about 40

years ago would have had a greater

effect.

Vaccination rates are also dismal --

about 30 percent -- for another target
group, people with high-risk

conditions such as diabetes and heart

disease, said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, a CDC

epidemiologist.

Thompson noted that flu shots are free
under Medicare and said new federal

rules should help increase vaccination
rates by allowing hospitalized
Medicare patients to get flu shots

without a doctor's order.

For the study, researchers developed a
new statistical model to create a more
accurate estimate of flu deaths using

national mortality and virus

surveillance data.

The new model shows that a more lethal
virus strain has hit in recent years,

contributing to the increase in

deaths.

But between 1976 and 1999, the number

of U.S. adults 85 and older doubled.

And the researchers found that this

age group was 16 times more likely to
die of flu-related causes than people ages 65 to 69.

Flu can progress to pneumonia and other life-threatening lung infections and can weaken elderly people, making them more vulnerable to other serious ailments, such as heart disease.

The study also found that older people are disproportionately affected by another respiratory virus previously thought to be more common in children.

The researchers estimate there are 11,000 deaths annually from respiratory syncytial virus, which can cause severe cold-like symptoms and pneumonia.

Their study confirmed that RSV is the most common cause of viral death in children under 5. But to researchers' surprise, the study found that 78 percent of RSV deaths occur in people 65 and older.

"We've known for some time that influenza and RSV have a profound impact on public health," said CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding. "However, these data indicate that the magnitude of the problem is larger than we once thought."

Vaccines against RSV are being developed.