Word: viruses
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...would probably have been dismissed as one more false alarm. But the word came from the Pasteur Institute in Paris, fons et origo of epochal research into man's relationship with the microbes: Institute scientists had devised a vaccine to protect against the present generation of influenza virus and against generations yet unborn. The vaccine, said last week's announcement, will be available almost immediately...
...virus is notorious for its frequent mutations. About every ten years, on the average, the transformation is so marked that the antibody system of a person who has been infected with the most recently prevalent strain, or vaccinated against it, does not recognize the new one. So he has no immunity...
Influenza is no longer the mass murderer it was decades ago, when an epidemic could kill thousands. Doctors theorize that people have developed sufficient natural immunity to reduce the virus's impact; medicine is usually able to cope with serious complications in the rare cases in which they occur. Still, the bug is impervious to antibiotics and too versatile to be fully controlled by inoculation. It mutates quickly enough to keep a step ahead of vaccine manufacturers; a new vaccine, using live viruses, will not be ready for some years (TIME...
...Public Health Service's Center for Disease Control in Atlanta reports that London flu has recently occurred in at least 18 states.* The new flu was not unexpected. Between major epidemics, which tend to run in ten-year cycles, minor mutations usually appear. The present virus is a variation of the Hong Kong organism. Once it made its British debut, American health officials felt that it was only a question of time before the new virus crossed the ocean...
...searching for an effective way of treating it when it does erupt-usually among the unvaccinated. A team of Bangladesh and Canadian physicians believe that they have now found a way. They report in Lancet that cytosine arabinoside (ara-C), a drug known to check the multiplication of several viruses that have DNA cores, may be potent against variola, the virus of smallpox. During the April-May epidemic in Bangladesh, they gave ara-C by continuous-drip injection to nine victims. Seven made rapid recoveries with minimal scarring, one showed no benefit, and one died (apparently of variolar pneumonia...