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...Nearly a year later, his worst fear may be coming true. If a virus, as Nobel laureate Peter Medawar described it, "is a piece of bad news wrapped in a protein," the past few weeks have had all the bad news the world can handle as avian influenza has broken out in Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam. Already, the disease appears to have jumped the species barrier, killing at least four people, and the virus is suspected of causing another 10 deaths. Asia has stared down avian-flu outbreaks before, notably in Hong Kong in 1997 when the city...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: On High Alert | 1/24/2004 | See Source »

...Vietnam, where already more than 1 million birds have died from the virus, and at least another 800,000 have been slaughtered as a precaution, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) officials were reassuring the public as late as Jan. 7 that "there has been no sign the disease will affect human health"?even though 12 patients had already turned up at the National Institute of Pediatrics with an "unusual" virus, according to hospital director Dr. Nguyen Thanh Liem. Even more worrying, it now appears that there were mass chicken die-offs in Vinh Phuc province in northern Vietnam...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: On High Alert | 1/24/2004 | See Source »

...appearance of avian flu in July, and the apparent Vietnamese cover-up, would mean that this virus has had months to roll through the chicken population, possibly mutating and becoming more pathogenic as it goes. The culprit this time is the same as in Hong Kong in 1997: the H5N1 influenza virus. Historically, this virus has wreaked havoc mainly on poultry. Among chickens, the disease manifests itself as a hemorrhagic fever, turning a pen of healthy birds into a bloody mass of goop and feathers within 24 hours. Since the 1960s, each reported appearance of the disease has drawn...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: On High Alert | 1/24/2004 | See Source »

...does a chicken flu become a human flu? The answer is in the RNA of the virus itself. Influenza viruses are known as shape-shifters, possessing the rare ability to swap proteins with other influenza viruses to create, essentially, new influenza viruses. As long as an H5N1 virus stays in its host species?ducks?then there is little risk of a human pandemic arising. But once that virus has infected chickens, then the chances of jumping to human beings, usually through contact with chicken feces, rise considerably. In humans, the virus is more likely to swap proteins with a human...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: On High Alert | 1/24/2004 | See Source »

...scrambling to figure out the origin and genomic sequence of the flu strains in Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Vietnam. A 14-strong WHO team, including experts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is expected to arrive in Hanoi by midweek. If they can determine where this virus came from, then perhaps better surveillance and monitoring of the poultry trade can curtail future outbreaks...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: On High Alert | 1/24/2004 | See Source »

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