Resurrected deadly flu

[valerief]

Found this off Whatreallyhappened.com

Scientists have pieced together the 1918 flu virus, resurrecting for the first time the cause of a pandemic that killed tens of millions worldwide.

Two research teams report separately today that the virus, which was re-created using genetic information from a 1918 victim exhumed from Alaskan permafrost in 1997, offers clues to the virulence of the avian flu strain that has killed 65 people in Southeast Asia and is the focus of a global meeting of health experts today in Washington, D.C.

REST ASSURED: The public health risk of resurrecting the virus is minimal because people developed immunity to the deadly 1918 virus after the pandemic, and a certain degree of immunity is believed to persist today.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-10-05-birdflu_x.htm?csp=24

I don't like that the 1918 flu was resurrected. And I'm not resting assured. I wasn't alive in 1918, and I don't know to what degree the immunity persists today.

[atommom]

1. That "immunity" argument sounds specious.

Many of our ancestors were never exposed to that flu, and there's no guarantee that modern-day Americans would have any immunity to the 1918 flu at all.

[BobRossi]

2. Hmmmnnnn.....

Resurrected virus + military response to outbreak = plan for facsism.

[Silverhair]

3. This is old news and is OK.

Take off the tinfoil hat, and learn something about the virus.

This was covered months ago in an article in Scientific American.

Yes, everybody DOES have some level of immunity to the 1918 flu. All of the flus that circulate today have elements of them that are from then, so you may get the flu, but it doesn't have the punch that it had back then.

Also, if you are alive today, it is because you are decended from people who survived the 1918 flu. Have you ever heard of evolution?

H5N1, the Avian Flu, is a completely different flu virus, and only a very few individuals on earth have immunity to it.

The purpose for digging up the 1918 flu was to learn about how it worked, and to compare it to current flus.

[valerief]

4. Isn't Scientific American now named

Intelligent Design American?