Canadian SARS outbreak mystifies experts

Canadian Press ^ | May 26, 2003

[eBelasco]

There is no mystery. The Kanadian "health-care" system is corrupt and inefficient, like all government agencies in communist states. We should close the border now so these traitorous socialists don't spread their pestilence here.

[IvanT]

Our Health Care system is an absolute joke.

[eBelasco]

I would gladly take some potent Tylenol and drive back across the border with a broken leg before I accepted treatment at one of their death-trap hospitals.

[aristeides]

Toronto back on WHO Sars list .

[vetvetdoug]

Schwabe's epidemiological principles in the purest logical form. Common sense without political correctness is what you are advocating; never happen.

[dc-zoo]

This canadian health care outfit sure are good at making excuses and covering for each other. How do they ever find the source/cause of the outbreak if no one has done anything wrong?

[blam]

Experimental 'smart-bomb' targets SARS

May 25 2003 at 08:42PM
By Paul Elias

After years of disappointment, an elegantly simple medical technique that targets bad cells while leaving healthy ones alone could be making a comeback in the high-profile fights against cancer and the SARS virus.

The technique, known as "antisense," aims to kill the genetic messenger carrying diseases. But despite all its promise over the last two decades, the field has brought just one obscure drug to market - treating an eye ailment in AIDS patients - and left numerous failures and jaded researchers in its wake.

Now comes antisense's first legitimate shot at success. Cancer patients are taking an experimental drug based on the method, Genasense, in three pivotal trials.

'All I need to know is what gene I have to screw up' The results are expected in the next few months. Scientists, analysts and Genta, the company that makes the drug, are optimistic at least one trial will lead to Food and Drug Administration approval of Genasense.

"The one thing this field has needed is one gigantic drug out the door," said Genta's chief executive, Raymond Warrell. "What the field desperately needs is economic success." New Jersey-based Genta has spent 15 years and $350-million developing Genasense, which targets several types of cancer, including adult leukemia, and has been tested on 900 patients.

Hope for the technique is also rising in Portland, Oregon, where AVI Biopharma is also promoting its use in an experimental treatment for SARS. AVI says its drug Neugene, which targets West Nile virus, has been tweaked to take on SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, which has infected thousands of people around the world.

AVI has been struggling for 23 years to make even one approved drug. Few outside the field had heard of the company until the SARS outbreak prompted a global search for solutions.

AVI's lagging stock price has doubled over the last two months and it recently got a $15-million cash infusion from bullish investors.

"Antisense is really beginning to reach its potential," AVI's chief, Denis Burger, told a Congressional subcommittee exploring ways to combat SARS.

Antisense drugs jam vital genetic signals by tackling targeted RNA, which carries DNA's instructions to the body. Antisense scientists create mirror images of the RNA messenger that is spreading illness. When injected in the body, the mirror image bonds with the RNA and prevents it from delivering its message to protein-building machinery.

"It's like cutting the wires from central command to the troops," said Patrick Iversen, AVI's top scientist. "All I need to know is what gene I have to screw up."

In theory, the bullseye technology is nimble and adaptable. It took AVI a matter of days to rejigger its antisense work on a coronavirus in mice and West Nile virus in penguins to attack SARS.

But some longtime experts are skeptical of AVI's chances of success against SARS. Dr Cy Stein of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, widely hailed as an antisense pioneer, said he needs to see much more data from AVI. Further, he points out that his field is littered with failures.

"We still don't understand a lot," Stein said. "It's extraordinarily complex."

The latest high-profile antisense drug flop occurred in March, when a large human experiment conducted by Isis Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly failed to prolong the life of lung cancer patients.

It turns out the dummy genetic material often does more than just snip communication between bad genes and their deadly proteins. Many antisense drug candidates have been found to affect other genes and proteins not implicated in disease. Still others have proven ineffective in snipping the wires.

Nonetheless, Stein said he is still "chasing the dream" of antisense, especially as a cancer treatment. He said Genta's antisense drug, Genasense, is the most advanced and promising candidate on the horizon. - Sapa-AP

[IvanT]

Indeed, they are becoming experts at that. There's a lot of questioning starting over this.

[Dog Gone]

Interesting.

[blam]

China Denies Death Of Former Party Leader

SARS?

[aristeides]

SARS?

When the Japanese reports about Zhao's death appeared is just when we were learning that SARS was in the leadership compound in Peking.

[TaxRelief]

This disease spreads in an unusual way. It appears that the medical community is not using good detective style analysis to determine mode of transmission.

Looking at all the evidence we have, I can make only one conclusion: SARS also hides around the edges of (electronic)buttons including: elevator call buttons, keypads, nurse call buttons, button flushers on toilets, ice machine releases, soda machine key pads, bed adjustment buttons, volume controls, medication adjustment control pads, blood pressure machine buttons, remote controls and so on.

If my "button theory" is true, it would take an extreme effort to properly sterilize everything. It would also be a strong recommendation for flat, sealed touchpads on everything, especially hospital beds.

[Kay Soze]

No Mystery.

You have a nation with socialized medicine.

There is little economic incentive to do well when the government controls an enterprise.

Go to the DMV and see it first hand.

A nation with socialized medicine is infecting nations with socialized medicine.

[riri]

If my "button theory" is true

If your button theory is true we have a real problem if this is let loose in American communities. Especially, considering the ability of the virus to stay alive for extended periods of time on surfaces.

On another note, haven't we been told that it takes a good amount of the virus to actually infect someone?

[dc-zoo]

The WHO definition allows a loophole to not consider a sars patient a probable case unless they had contact with another sars patient or traveled to a sars infected area even if they are proven to have the virus. This works in favor of governments that prefer to keep their number of probable cases to a minimum while ignoring other methods of infection by transfer of sars virus from contaminated buttons and other objects. The WHO definition has flaws.

[swarthyguy]

AVI says its drug Neugene, which targets West Nile virus, has been tweaked to take on SARS....
AVI has been struggling for 23 years to make even one approved drug.

Interesting fact; any ideas on similarities between the two diseases? A common root?

[TaxRelief]

If your "button theory" is true we have a real problem if this is let loose in American communities. Especially, considering the ability of the virus to stay alive for extended periods of time on surfaces.

On another note, haven't we been told that it takes a good amount of the virus to actually infect someone?

A soda machine may not be a problem, but the hospital bed controls, on the other hand...

[TaxRelief]

WHO case definition (excerpt): A person with an unexplained acute respiratory illness resulting in death after 1 November 2002,(1)but on whom no autopsy has been performed AND one or more of the following exposures during to 10 days prior to onset of symptoms:

• close contact,(2) with a person who is a suspect or probable case of SARS;
• history of travel to an area with recent local transmission of SARS
• residing in an area with recent local transmission of SARS

  Since Toronto has local transmission, they do not have a way to wiggle out.

[dc-zoo]

That's right. Now that they have been designated as a sars area again by the WHO.

[riri]

A workstation or keyboard too. I was thinking the other day when I was doing some shopping, the sheer amount of people, say, a Wal Mart cashier comes into contact with. Granted it is not close cotact but it can be close enough for a dozen or so throughout a shift to probably be in the wrong line at the wrong time.

I was also thinking that many of these folks working in these service type jobs (who come into contact with large amounts of people) are the people who.

1. Many times don't get paid if they don't work
2. Live paycheck to paycheck, can't afford to not work, will continue trying to go into work long enough to infect others.