Word: websterisms
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...Webster assigned a young scientist, Yoshihiro Kawaoka, to try to figure out how the virus transformed itself into such a "hot" pathogen. Kawaoka, now a professor of virology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, compared the genetic structure of viruses from the first and second waves and found only a single, extremely subtle change in the H gene. The two viruses differed by just one nucleotide--one of 1,700 nucleotides that made up the gene...
...soon De Jong was also convinced. That night he spoke with Albert Osterhaus, chairman of the virology department at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, where virologist Eric Claas had analyzed the suspect virus using a panel of reagents derived from flu strains isolated and maintained by Webster. Claas had first determined that the virus was H5N1, well before the CDC and Mill Hill. At the outset even he did not believe it. An H5 infection in humans was unheard of. He too assumed the H5 was a contaminant...
Meanwhile Osterhaus had called Webster in Memphis to learn more about H5. Only then, in that phone call, did the human-flu research community at last learn of the earlier outbreak of chicken flu on the three Hong Kong farms; and only then did Webster and Shortridge learn of the first human case--even though Shortridge's laboratory and Lim's are housed in adjacent buildings...
...Webster already had the virus in his collection, its genetic structure detailed, its heritage mapped. He recalls, with obvious delight, how he told Osterhaus, "Abe, I have the precursor of this virus in my laboratory...
...Webster, it was an exciting moment. "The situation in Hong Kong is what I've been predicting throughout my career," he says. For years, he contends, people have dismissed avian flu "as a problem of chickens--who cares?" He revels in his newfound credibility. "Finally," he says, laughing, "at the end of my career, the chickens have come home to roost...