Word: humanely
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...reason H5N1, which first cropped up in humans in 1997, has never given rise to a pandemic is that the virus does not appear to spread easily among people. It has been transmitted between humans only in rare cases, usually among family members in close conditions. But the fear has long been that if bird flu genetically mixed with human flu - in a process called reassortment, in which two flu viruses swap genes in an infected cell - it could create a new strain that is both deadly and transmissible, as illustrated by the new PNAS study. That's how many...
...PNAS study undermines that hope. The key difference in this study was the presence of a single gene from the H3N2 human virus: the PB2 protein, which gave the hybrid viruses the ability to spread easily among the lab mice. Scientists think the protein may allow hybrid viruses to grow more efficiently in the lower temperatures of the upper respiratory tract, from which the virus can more easily spread to others. (The H5N1 virus tends to infect the lower respiratory tract in humans, where it can't easily get out and spread...
Nevertheless, in the real world, H5N1 has not yet mutated into a more contagious form, despite having had plenty of chances to mix with human flu viruses. That could mean bird flu will remain a dead end, infecting the occasional unlucky person but never turning into a full-blown pandemic. But the PNAS study suggests that the potential exists, and it gives health officials a surveillance target in the form of the PB2 protein in each human H5N1 infection. Global health experts must always be ready: while the 2009 H1N1 pandemic may be winding down, the next...
...high that his attempts to live up to your expectations were doomed to fail. Now you are among his fiercest critics, highlighting his failures almost with a sense of glee. I am not a great Obama fan, but give the guy a chance - he is only human and is trying, as best as he can, to call the right shots. Jacq Krige, PORT ELIZABETH, SOUTH AFRICA...
...Hospital and given a diagnosis of cervical cancer. During treatment, doctors removed a sample of her tumor and sent it to a research lab without her permission. Lacks died a few months later, but the sample lived on--and on and on. The strain, dubbed HeLa, was the first human tissue to be successfully kept alive as a culture. Since her death, Lacks' cells have been shot into space, infected with tuberculosis and zapped with radiation to test the effects of a nuclear bomb. HeLa helped develop the polio vaccine and drugs for everything from Parkinson's to AIDS...