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| -Short Attention Span Theater- | |
| Black Death ’is lying in wait’ | |
| 2004-05-22 | |
Globally the disease still affects between 1,000 to 3,000 people a year. However, if caught early it can be cured with antibiotics. As part of their research, Professor Duncan and Dr Scott studied original parish records, wills and diaries to create a profile of the killer disease. They examined eyewitness accounts as well as accounts by several famous figures who escaped infection, including Henry VIII and William Shakespeare. This research led them to conclude that the deaths were not caused by bubonic plague but by some other viral disease. Professor Duncan said the virus may still exist somewhere in the world. "Although the last known outbreak of plague occurred over three centuries ago, we believe the virus is merely lying in wait, ready to strike again." He also suggested that the disease if it does emerge again could turn into a major killer. "Globalisation and our increasingly mobile population make rapid transmission of infectious disease unavoidable - as demonstrated in the recent outbreaks of Sars. These factors, combined with the increased threat of bio-terrorism, may allow for the re-emergence of the virus as an even more ruthless killer." However, Dr Michael Smith, a leading expert on plague, played down the claims. "For many years, there have been queries about whether the bubonic plague was responsible for the Black Death," he told BBC News Online. "However, much of the clinical descriptions certainly fit bubonic plague. A paper, published by French researchers recently, based on DNA tests on the remains of two people who died during this time also found evidence that it was bubonic plague. "The body of evidence suggests that it was bubonic plague." | |
| Posted by:Mark Espinola |
| #10 Zenster as usual is wrong. Were a disease like SARS or BP go pandemic, then organized states could control it the same way SARS was controlled by quarenteen, isolation and barrier medicine. For someone who cannot be bothered to spell "quarantine" properly, you sure talk a blue streak, Phil B. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-05-23 2:52:12 AM |
| #9 im wonder if yersinpestis endangered. |
| Posted by: muck4doo 2004-05-22 11:39:33 PM |
| #8 Bubonic plague is caused by yersinia pestis. The point of the article is that that the authors thought it wasn't Y pestis but a virus of some kind. I think they're wrong. BP is indeed found in rodents in the west, and there are a couple of sporadic cases in the U.S. each year because of this. Ebola won't cause a new plague, for a simple reason -- its victims die too quickly to spread the disease very far. It's easy enough to quarentine as well, and usually the 2nd wave dies out without infecting anyone else. Mutating influenza wouldn't be hard -- the Chinese manage to do it every year :-) However, mutating it to be more lethal and infectious would be more difficult. As is pointed out re SARS, if it became clear that a new virus (influenza or anything else) was on the rampage, 1st and 2nd world countries would institute public health measures, and the disease would be contained. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2004-05-22 11:24:27 PM |
| #7 Plague is commonly detected among squirrels and other rodents in the West - it'll be pandemic ONLY among the ignorant masses who believe their holy men that fleas and vermin are OK, Joooos and their "needles" are not. Sad to say, good riddance if your birth rate exceeds your IQ |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-05-22 10:28:31 PM |
| #6 This, or one of its gene-jumping siblings, is the one to worry about... I recommend The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett is (was for me in '96) an eye-opener giving excellent background and avoiding "the sky is falling!" hysteria. It was published in 1995, so it is somewhat dated. Perhaps someone knows of a more recent and better text for substantive information. |
| Posted by: .com 2004-05-22 10:17:52 PM |
| #5 Grunter, I think the fault lies with the BBC reporting, which is particularly abysmal when covering science and technology. |
| Posted by: Phil B 2004-05-22 10:11:41 PM |
| #4 Zenster as usual is wrong. Were a disease like SARS or BP go pandemic, then organized states could control it the same way SARS was controlled by quarenteen, isolation and barrier medicine. We were lucky that SARS didn't get into sub-saharan Africa or the moslem world where states don't have the capability to do this and the disease would spread unchecked. The result would be entire areas would be devastated, but the West would be relatively unaffected. An interesting consequence would be every tranzi liberal would get mugged big time by reality. |
| Posted by: Phil B 2004-05-22 10:09:17 PM |
| #3 Bubonic plague was (and is) not caused by a virus, but by a Bacillus bacteria, Yersinia pestis. What sort of medical researcher doesn't know the difference between a virus and a bacteria? |
| Posted by: Grunter 2004-05-22 10:04:28 PM |
| #2 A little mentioned fact is the incredible adaptive abilities of the AIDS virus. Even after extensive study, there remain large gaps in our understanding of this potent viral threat. Consider for one moment what would happen if the AIDS virus mutated to an airborne version. Now imagine if a concerted effort was made to intentionally mutate one of the various killer viruses into a more easily transmissable form. All of this is merely one more reason for smashing those states that continue to exhibit the least support for international terrorism. Technology has drastically outpaced our ability to both control and monitor its adverse uses. The biggest viruses are 400,000 base pairs long with HIV containing 10,000 base pairs whereas hepatitis B contains 3000, human cytomegalovirus contains about 230 kilo base pairs (kbps where kilo means thousand) and influenza at 12 kbp. By contrast the E Coli bacteria is 4 million base pairs, the the bacteria that causes tuberculosis is 4,411,532 base pairs (bp) and the bacteria that causes leprosy is 3,268,203 bp. So building artificial bacteria from scratch is a much bigger job. But keep in mind that 12 kbp number for influenza. Individual influenza strains have killed tens of millions of people. Imagine a bioengineered influenza attack that unleashed many deadly strains at once. The results for the human race would be catastrophic. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-05-22 9:44:12 PM |
| #1 BP is still endemic to parts of this country. One location IIRC is Detroit. In this age of rapid international air travel and increasing mobility I am literally scared that eventually Ebola or something similiar will get out of Africa. And that is not the only place that a new killer could come from |
| Posted by: cheaderhead 2004-05-22 8:57:45 PM |