Ablogalypse Now

Indonesian H5N1: Extensive Human to Human Transmission?

Recombinomics is now reporting that the World Health Organization has adopted a new term - "extensive transmission" - to describe the H5N1 avian flu situation in Indonesia.

"Petersen said preliminary tests showed they had influenza, but the type was unclear. The Health Ministry said it might announce test results later on Friday.

"What we know is that from one clear case in Thailand and probably in other cases there has been close family contact and this is why it could have gone from one person to another," Petersen said.

"It's not what we call extensive human-to-human transmission ... It doesn't mean mutation."

The above comments are in reference to a father and son who were admitted on Wednesday to Sulianti Saroso hospital in Jakarta.  The son had handled a neighbor's sick poultry, but his father had not had contact with poultry.  Thus, when both were admitted with bird flu symptoms, concern was expressed regarding human-to-human transmission associated with mutation.  Since both now have pneumonia and evidence of influenza infection, it likely that the son infected his father with H5N1 bird flu.

However, these familial clusters are not new and although WHO has been slow to acknowledged the fact, the vast majority of the familial clusters involved human-to-human transmission.  Now WHO is using a new term, called extensive human-to-human transmission.  Since WHO has maintained that the 2005 flu pandemic is a phase 3, which involves only rare human-to-human transmission, the focus on extensive human-to-human transmission may also be an admission that the pandemic has progressed beyond phase 3. When the transmission is sustained, the pandemic has reached the final phase, which is phase 6.

Mutant Mice Can Regrow Organs

I don't know what's creepier, the genetically altered mice that can  regrow severed/destroyed limbs and organs like a salamander, or the scientists who sliced, diced and amputated all kinds of shit to see what would grow back and what wouldn't.

Is the WHO Bullshitting the World On H5N1?

I don't know....but it's very hard to read this piece from Recombinomics and not feel like there's either some serious incompetence, or outright deception going on.

Indonesians FUBAR On H5N1, May Doom Us All

According to MSNBC, there are now over 50 suspected cases of bird flu across the country, but given the fact that the coverage by the Indonesian media has been about as clear as mud, there's really no telling how bad things are over there.

Despite this, and despite the fact that the bass-ackwards Indonesian healthcare community is, in many instances, not properly diagnosing the virus, the Indonesian tourism industry is not suffering any ill effects.

Pardon me for my French here but there is simply no fucking excuse for these waterheads to not shut down their entire tourist industry until they pull their heads out of their asses and figure out the true extent of this outbreak.

To not do so is stupid, irresponsible, and could potentially doom the rest of the fucking planet.

H5N1 Spreading in Indonesia

According to Recombinomics, H5N1 is not only spreading in Indonesia, it appears that many cases are not being properly diagnosed due to a rather clunky national healthcare system.

Bottom line, the full extent of this emerging outbreak is dangerously murky.

Don't Mind the Maggots....

....they're for medicinal purposes.....No, they're helping this festering wound on my head heal faster! No, really! Hey, you gonna eat that fried rice? Hey, where you going?

Maggots as medicine? I guess Steve Martin's Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber is back in business.

Remind me never to get a festering head wound in England.

Avian Flu Update

The following comes from Reuters.

The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization said it would be at least a year, perhaps never, before the virus, thought to be spread by migrating birds, was under control.

"We calculate that it will be at least one year until we can confidently say that we are on top of the problem, provided that countries collaborate and that donors come up with the necessary funds," said Samuel Jutzi, head of the animal health department.

"We still hope that the countries in the region can get on top of the disease but we are less certain as to whether the virus can be pushed back or eradicated," he told Reuters in Rome.

"It may well be that the sector has to live with this virus as it tries to live with other diseases."

........

The WHO and the FAO take some comfort from the relatively low number of human cases in a region where millions of people live close to poultry and many thousands have taken part in culling.

That showed the H5N1 virus has difficulty jumping the species barrier, officials said.

They did not rule out the risk, however remote, that the virus could infect a person incubating a human flu virus and would then mutate into a strain that could cause a pandemic.

"As long as the epidemic continues, the risk of a new virus emerging is still there," said WHO Bangkok representative Bjorn Melgaard.

Many experts are worried about China, which has reported outbreaks in 15 provinces and major cities but no human cases.

"You look at China and the number of infected poultry and wonder if there really can be no one out there that is not infected," Cordingley said.

Still curious? Read the whole story here.

Deadly Radioactive Material Stolen in China

Police in China are searching for a football-sized canister of deadly cesium-137 that was stolen earlier this week.

FDA Links Happy Pills With Suicide

A few years ago, my grandmother's husband shot himself in the heart on the day after Christmas. He had been horribly depressed for quite some time and had recently been put on the prescription anti-depressant Paxil.

At the time, I thought that the incident was isolated and largely the result of a cultural miscommunication at the doctor-patient level, rather than a problem with the medication itself.

After all, the FDA would never approve a medication like Paxil for public use unless it was absolutely sure of its safety, right? I mean, even the Paxil web site has the FDA's official seal of approval to assure people of its safety.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Paxil for the treatment of major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), social anxiety disorder (SAD), panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Now it seems that the FDA is waking up to the fact that medications like Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft may actually contribute to teen suicides.

Federal regulators said for the first time yesterday that clinical trials of popular antidepressants such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft show a greater risk of suicide among children taking the drugs compared with those taking dummy pills.

Although only one of these drugs has been approved for the treatment of children with depression, doctors are prescribing them to hundreds of thousands of American children every year. The new Food and Drug Administration analysis of the trials is starkly at odds with repeated assurances by the U.S. psychiatric establishment that the drugs are very safe.

Maybe I'm out of touch on this one, but doesn't it seem like the FDA got things bass-ackwards here?

Bird Flu May Have Passed Between Humans

As the bird flu continues to spread across Asia, scientists now suspect that the recent death of two Vietnamese sisters may be the first incident of the virus being transmitted from human to human.