1918 flu pandemic originated in pigs

WASHINGTON (AP) - The 1918 influenza virus that killed more than 20 million people worldwide originated from American pigs and is unlike any other known flu bug, say researchers. They warn that it could strike again.

Using lung tissue taken at autopsy 79 years ago from an Army private killed by the flu, scientists at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology made a genetic analysis of the virus and concluded it is unique, though closely related to the ''swine'' flu.

"This is the first time that anyone has gotten a look at this virus which killed millions of people in one year, making it the worst infectious disease episode ever," said Dr. Jeffery K. Taubenberger, leader of the Armed Forces Institute team. "It does not match any virus that has been found since."

Although the disease that caused the worldwide epidemic was called "Spanish flu," the virus apparently is a mutation that evolved in American pigs and was spread around the globe by U.S. troops mobilized for World War I, said Taubenberger.

The Army private whose tissue was analyzed contracted the flu at Fort Jackson, S.C. For that reason, Taubenberger and his colleagues suggest in the journal Science that the virus be known as Influenza A/South Carolina.

Science is publishing the study today.

Army doctors in 1918 conducted autopsies on some of the 43,000 servicemen killed by the flu and preserved some specimens in formaldehyde and wax.

Taubenberger said his team sorted through 30 specimens before finding enough virus in the private's lung tissue to partially sequence the genes for hemagglutinin and neuraminidase, two key proteins in flu virus.

"The hemagglutinin gene matches closest to swine influenza viruses, showing that this virus came into humans from pigs," said Taubenberger.

The finding supports a widespread theory that flu viruses from swine are the most virulent for humans.

Most experts believe that flu viruses reside harmlessly in birds, where they are genetically stable. Occasionally, a virus from birds will infect pigs. The swine immune system attacks the virus, forcing it to change genetically to survive. The result is a new virus. When this new bug is spread to humans, it can be devastating, said Taubenberger.

Two other flu viruses spread all over the world since 1918 - Asian flu in 1957 and the Hong Kong flu in 1968 - and both mutated in pigs. ((Source))

The Spanish Influenza

I Was An On-The-Spot Observer Of The 1918 Influenza Epidemic

All the doctors and people who were living at the time of the 1918 Spanish Influenza epidemic say it was the most terrible disease the world has ever had. Strong men, hale and hearty, one day would be dead the next.

The disease had the characteristics of the black death added to typhoid, diphtheria, pneumonia, smallpox, paralysis and all the diseases the people had been vaccinated with immediately following World War 1. Practically the entire population had been injected "seeded" with a dozen or more diseases — or toxic serums. When all those doctor-made diseases started breaking out all at once it was tragic.

That pandemic dragged on for two years, kept alive with the addition of more poison drugs administered by the doctors who tried to suppress the symptoms. As far as I could find out, the flu hit only the vaccinated. Those who had refused the shots escaped the flu.

My family had refused all the vaccinations so we remained well all the time. We knew from the health teachings of Graham, Trail, Tilden and others, that people cannot contaminate the body with poisons without causing disease.

When the flu was at its peak, all the stores were closed as well as the schools, businesses — even the hospital, as the doctors and nurses had been vaccinated too and were down with the flu. No one was on the streets. It was like a ghost town. We seemed to be the only family which didn’t get the flu; so my parents went from house to house doing what they could to look after the sick, as it was impossible to get a doctor then.

If it were possible for germs, bacteria, virus, or bacilli to cause disease, they had plenty of opportunity to attack my parents when they were spending many hours a day in the sick rooms. But they didn’t get the flu and they didn’t bring any germs home to attack us children and cause anything. None of our family had the flu — not even a sniffle— and it was in the winter with deep snow on the ground. Swine Flu Expose

What You Eat Becomes Part of You

As a young child I never liked eating red meat. As a little kid I would hide the meat under some potatoes to be able to throw it out, because I could not eat it. In some way I was fortunate that something inside me just did not like to consume meat and animal products, because what we eat becomes part of us.

The same applies to mould, ecoli bacteria, toxins and fungus. If our environment and our food sources are contaminated with parasites, fungus, salmonella or heavly metals they all become part of us. However, the substances that make up animal, bird and fish also become part of us when we consume the flesh of these creatures.

"You are what you eat", an archaeological investigation of diet
Diet & Archaeology

Many years ago I discovered a thin, frail wild peach tree growing on its own in the middle of a small park. At the time I discovered the peach tree there were small wild peaches ready to eat. I have never tasted peaches as rich and as beautiful as those growing on this wild tree. On the Island of Crete I found an ancient fig tree growing on rocks above the sea. The tree was growing wild and the figs were black and small. At the time I discovered the wild fig tree there were small ripe black figs ready to eat. I have never tasted figs as rich as those growing wild on the tree above the sea.

Humans on earth (today) consume and do not love the trees, the plants, the animals, the birds, the fish and the fruits of the earth. People no longer respect the spirit within life that surrounds us. "We are all from the earth, and when the earth, the water, the atmosphere is corrupted - then it will create its own reaction..." Indigenous Native American Prophecy

Adam and Eve Rediscover The Gene

Is this the end of experimenting on animals?

ADAM is a "robot scientist" researchers believe to be the first machine to independently come up with new scientific findings. While we've become accustomed to robots built to repeat a given task many times over, scientists at Aberystwyth University in Wales and the U.K's University of Cambridge designed Adam to take a more human approach to scientific inquiry. And while it may not win the Nobel Prize for physics just yet, Adam appears to be doing impressively well for a young scientist, carrying out scientific research automatically, without the need for further human intervention.

As reported in the latest issue of the journal Science, Adam autonomously hypothesized that certain genes in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae code for enzymes that catalyze some of the microorganism's biochemical reactions. The yeast is noteworthy, as scientists use it to model more complex life systems.

Adam then devised experiments to test its prediction, ran the experiments using laboratory robotics, interpreted the results, and used those findings to revise its original hypothesis and test it out further. The researchers used their own separate experiments to confirm that Adam's hypotheses were both novel and correct--all the while probably wondering how soon they'd become obsolete. CNET