Worldwide Race to Destroy Flu Virus

[UZI Suicide 0]

http://www.chennaionline.com/colnews/newsi...RYNAME=National

 

The World Health Organisation issued a warning today after a US institute sent to thousands of laboratories samples of a lethal flu virus that slew up to four million people in the late 1950s.

 

The controversy revealed an apparent loophole in biosafety procedures, experts said.

 

"There is a slim but a real risk that this could spark a pandemic," said Maria Cheng, a spokeswoman for the WHO, explaining that many people around the world would have no protection if the virus were ever released from the high-security labs.

 

The virus, H2N2, killed between one million and four million people worldwide during the Asian influenza pandemic of 1957-58 before disappearing in 1968.

"As far as pandemics go, it (the event in 1957-58) was relatively mild. But if this were to recur it would have significant consequences for the public health system," Cheng said.

 

The samples were included in kits used to regularly test the ability of the laboratories in 18 countries to identify strains of flu virus.

 

Ninety per cent of the laboratories were in North America.

 

The virus was sent to laboratories in Belgium, Bermuda, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States, the UN's health agency said.

 

So far, laboratories in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea were known to have destroyed all the H2N2 samples they received, it said.

 

The agency's top flu expert, Klaus Stohr, said all the samples were expected to be destroyed by Friday.

 

A US-based private institution, the College of American Pathologists, distributed the samples of H2N2 to 3,747 laboratories through the private Meridian Bioscience Inc in two batches, in October 2004 and February 2005.

 

The samples appeared to have been distributed deliberately and legally because of national differences in the hazard rating of the strain, Stohr told journalists.

 

"Legally that's fine, epidemiologically and looking at the risk assessment, it may have not been a good idea to do that," Stohr said.

 

"It is certainly something that will have to be reconsidered in the future, definitely, and WHO will make recommendations," to ensure that the virus strain is given a higher hazard rating, he added.

 

The WHO said normally only circulating influenza virus strains to which people have been exposed in recent years should be sent out in testing kits.

 

It warned in a statement yesterday that people born after 1968 would probably have no or only limited immunity to the strain, which is not contained in current influenza vaccines.

 

The alarm was first raised by Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory after it detected H2N2 virus in a sample on March 25, leading to an alert issued by US authorities through the College of American Pathologists on April 8.

 

So far, there have been no reports of accidental infection among laboratory workers, the WHO said. (Agencies)

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

A-choo.

 

Uh-oh...

[edotherocket 0]

I'm still struggling to follow this. So some random American institute sends out THOUSANDS of lethal flu viruses to a whole bunch of countries...and it was a mistake? Or the World Health Organisation just disapproves?

 

I'm just not sure I trust those damned Burmudans with a flu virus.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

A-choo.

 

Uh-oh...

That's what I thought. I got sick several days after coming home. I'm not sure if I got it on the flight there, at Staples, or on the flight back. But I knew the trip didn't start out well when I woman at the terminal leaving Oakland coughed directly on the back of my neck without covering her mouth.

 

Let's hope I don't die from this thing, or you'll have to stop calling me a hippie and resort to picking on INXS like everyone else does.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

So now is wishing the flu on another poster a bannable offense?

 

And where did you go, Jobber?...