Free Republic

Bird flu's human-attack pathway revealed 18:00 22 March 2006 NewScientist.com news service Debora MacKenzie Two separate research groups have independently discovered why the H5N1 bird flu virus causes lethal pneumonia in people, but is – so far – hard for people to catch. In the process, they have found a way to predict which mutations might make the virus more contagious, and potentially become a pandemic strain. To date, confirmed human deaths from the disease stand at 103 worldwide The H5N1 virus binds to sugars on the surface of cells deep in human lungs, but not to cells lining the...

Scare headlines about the possibility of a deadly flu pandemic have been with us for a few years now, ever since the H5N1 bird-flu virus that first appeared in Hong Kong in 1997 resurfaced in the region in 2003. But in the past month the drumbeat of such stories has grown faster and louder: Avian Flu Arrives in Poland. Turkey. Azerbajian. Germany. Denmark. And, just last Friday, Israel. The good news, according to Dr. Michael Osterholm, the director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, is that the arrival of infected birds in North America—sometime...