coldest story ever told

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New HIV strain discovered in woman from Cameroon
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID (AP) – 4 hours ago

WASHINGTON — A new strain of the virus that causes AIDS has been discovered in a woman from the African nation of Cameroon. It differs from the three known strains of human immunodeficiency virus and appears to be closely related to a form of simian virus recently discovered in wild gorillas, researchers report in Monday's edition of the journal Nature Medicine.

The finding "highlights the continuing need to watch closely for the emergence for new HIV variants, particularly in western central Africa," said the researchers, led by Jean-Christophe Plantier of the University of Rouen, France.

The three previously known HIV strains are related to the simian virus that occurs in chimpanzees.

The most likely explanation for the new find is gorilla-to-human transmission, Plantier's team said. But they added they cannot rule out the possibility that the new strain started in chimpanzees and moved into gorillas and then humans, or moved directly from chimpanzees to both gorillas and humans.

The 62-year-old patient tested positive for HIV in 2004, shortly after moving to Paris from Cameroon, according to the researchers. She had lived near Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, but said she had no contact with apes or bush meat, a name often given to meat from wild animals in tropical countries.

The woman currently shows no signs of AIDS and remains untreated, though she still carries the virus, the researchers said.

How widespread this strain is remains to be determined. Researchers said it could be circulating unnoticed in Cameroon or elsewhere. The virus' rapid replication indicates that it is adapted to human cells, the researchers reported.

Their research was supported by the French Health Watch Institute, the French National Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis and Rouen University Hospital.

A separate paper, also in Nature Medicine, reports that people with genital herpes remain at increased risk of HIV infection even after the herpes sores have healed and the skin appears normal.

Researchers led by Drs. Lawrence Corey and Jia Zhu of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center found that long after the areas where the herpes sores existed seem to be clear, they still have immune-cell activity that can encourage HIV infection.

Herpes is marked by recurring outbreaks and has been associated with higher rates of infection with HIV. It had been thought that the breaks in the skin were the reason for higher HIV rates, but a study last year found that treatment of herpes with drugs did not reduce the HIV risk.

The researchers tested the skin of herpes patients for several weeks after their sores had healed and found that, compared with other genital skin, from twice to 37 times more immune cells remained at the locations where the sores had been.

HIV targets immune cells and in laboratory tests the virus reproduced three to five times faster in tissue from the healed sites as in tissue from other areas.

"Understanding that even treated (herpes) infections provide a cellular environment conducive to HIV infection suggests new directions for HIV prevention research," commented Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.

That study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Tietze Foundation.

how to fight drug cartels and rampant immigration hassles?

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I don't know. I've been made wary by the countless perfidies playing out before my very eyes, but I don't like the mixture of DNA in this virus, and I don't like the timing of it either. I'm too aware of how many problems a pandemic would alleviate as well. The people who do all the deciding for our Deciders don't have any morals. In fact, they rather seem to get off on the uglier aspects of world domination. So. This could be simply changing conditions growing wilder flu strains, or it could be stranger scientists cooking up nastier bugs in their petri dishes for black ops to let loose on problem populations, the problem of population. Whutever. You might want to keep an eye on the head count, updated daily at the CDC.

And, whether it or the AP has the better grasp, I can't even call it:

Mexico fights swine flu with 'pandemic potential'
By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer – 3 mins ago

MEXICO CITY – A new swine flu strain that has killed as many as 68 people and sickened more than 1,000 across Mexico has "pandemic potential," the World Health Organization chief said Saturday, and it may be too late to contain the sudden outbreak.

The disease has already reached Texas and California, and with 24 new suspected cases reported Saturday in Mexico City alone, schools were closed and all public events suspended in the capital until further notice — including more than 500 concerts and other gatherings in the metropolis of 20 million.

A hot line fielded 2,366 calls in its first hours from frightened city residents who suspected they might have the disease. Soldiers and health workers handed out masks at subway stops, and hospitals dealt with crowds of people seeking help.

The World Health Organization's director-general, Margaret Chan, said the outbreak of the never-before-seen virus is a very serious situation and has "pandemic potential." But she said it is still too early to tell if it would become a pandemic.

"The situation is evolving quickly," Chan said in a telephone news conference in Geneva. "A new disease is by definition poorly understood."

This virus is a mix of human, pig and bird strains that prompted WHO to meet Saturday to consider declaring an international public health emergency — a step that could lead to travel advisories, trade restrictions and border closures. Spokesman Gregory Hartl said a decision would not be made Saturday.

Scientists have warned for years about the potential for a pandemic from viruses that mix genetic material from humans and animals. Another reason to worry is that authorities said the dead so far don't include vulnerable infants and elderly. The Spanish flu pandemic, which killed at least 40 million people worldwide in 1918-19, also first struck otherwise healthy young adults.

This swine flu and regular flu can have similar symptoms — mostly fever, cough and sore throat, though some of the U.S. victims who recovered also experienced vomiting and diarrhea. But unlike with regular flu, humans don't have natural immunity to a virus that includes animal genes — and new vaccines can take months to bring into use.

But experts at the WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the nature of this outbreak may make containment impossible. Already, more than 1,000 people have been infected in as many as 14 of Mexico's 32 states, according to daily newspaper El Universal. Tests show 20 people have died of the swine flu, and 48 other deaths were probably due to the same strain.

The CDC and Canadian health officials were studying samples sent from Mexico, and airports around the world were screening passengers from Mexico for symptoms of the new flu strain, saying they may quarantine passengers.

But CDC officials dismissed the idea of trying that in the United States, and some expert said it's too late to try to contain spread of the virus.

They noted there had been no direct contact between the cases in the San Diego and San Antonio areas, suggesting the virus had already spread from one geographic area through other undiagnosed people.

"Anything that would be about containing it right now would purely be a political move," said Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota pandemic expert.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon said his government only discovered the nature of the virus late Thursday, with the help of international laboratories. "We are doing everything necessary," he said in a brief statement.

But the government had said for days that its growing flu caseload was nothing unusual, so the sudden turnaround angered many who wonder if Mexico missed an opportunity to contain the outbreak.

"Why did it break out, where did it break out? What's the magnitude of the problem?" pizzeria owner David Vasquez said while taking his family to a movie Friday night, despite warnings to stay out of theaters.

Across Mexico's capital, residents reacted with fatalism and confusion, anger and mounting fear at the idea that their city may be ground zero for a global epidemic.

Authorities urged people to stay home if they feel sick and to avoid shaking hands or kissing people on the cheeks.

Outside Hospital Obregon in the capital's middle-class Roma district, a tired Dr. Roberto Ortiz, 59, leaned against an ambulance and sipped coffee Saturday on a break from an unusually busy shift.

"The people are scared," Ortiz said. "A person gets some flu symptoms or a child gets a fever and they think it is this swine flu and rush to the hospital."

He said none of the cases so far at the hospital had turned out to be swine flu.

Jose Donasiano Rosales, 69, got nervous on the subway and decided to get out one stop early.

"I felt I couldn't be there for even one more station," Donasiano said as he set up a rack to sell newspapers on a busy thoroughfare. "We're in danger of contagion. ... I'm worried."

The same virus also sickened at least eight people in Texas and California, though there have been no deaths north of the border, puzzling experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A "seed stock" genetically matched to the new swine flu virus has been created by the CDC, said Dr. Richard Besser, the agency's acting director. If the government decides vaccine production is necessary, manufacturers would need that stock to get started.

The CDC says two flu drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza, seem effective against the new strain. Roche, the maker of Tamiflu, said the company is prepared to immediately deploy a stockpile of the drug if requested. Both drugs must be taken early, within a few days of the onset of symptoms, to be most effective.

Mexico's Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said the country has enough Tamiflu to treat 1 million people — only one in 20 people in greater Mexico City alone — and that the medicine will be strictly controlled and handed out only by doctors.

At Mexico's National Institute of Respiratory Illnesses, Adrian Anda waited to hear whether his 15-year-old daughter had the frightening new disease. She had been suffering a cough and fever for a week.

"If they say that it is, then we'll suffer. Until then, we don't want to think about it," he said.

Be afraid of your farm workers, and meat packers, and carpenters, and loggers, and gardeners, and sun worshippers returning from vacations in Mexico....

They're even nervous in New York.

And Kansas.

Even Ottawa.

AND I TOLD YOU THE TIMING IS CREEPY.

be very afraid

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pakistan on the brink

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This is supremely bad news.

I've been hearing rumblings all day about international military brass meeting secretly recently and the speculation is that it was about bio-terror, but... well... if it's this bad in Pakistan, wouldn't it be safer to assume they are meeting to coördinate how they're going to get the nukes out of Pakistan? Or am I just imputing too much intelligence and responsibility to this pack of kleptocratic madmen we already know suck planets?

the agony of our sunsets

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while i was blissin' out here

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And while I only have cub reporter, Old Uncle Dave's word for it, I'm given to understand that Mendocino County has the most fires of all. I'm having a purple pixilated hissy about this because I was screamingly vocal about the horrendous problem of fuels loading in the redwood timberlands there for a seriously long time. I was hassling everyone, clear up to the Board of Forestry, and brainstorming like mad to figure out ways of chipping slash piles and spreading them to feed the forest, and how to effectively hack out the insane amounts of understory brush that had grown up from the repeated logging shows all over tarnation. Old growth redwood is fire resistant, but Mendocino is almost completely second, third and fourth growth timberlands now and burns entirely too well.

Even though my stranger-than-fiction life has plopped me down in Del Norte County right now, Mendocino has been my home for decades and I am not kidding. My brains are coming out my ears over this. I worked myself stupid for so long trying to make sure there was some way those cutover timberlands could make it back to trees someday.

Hey, did it say anything in the Bible about getting your heart broken daily in the end times?

world food crisis

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The Einsteins at the summit propose we grow more of it....

catch 22

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I question the judgement of doing this, even as they excuse themselves on seemingly humanitarian grounds. There had to be other ways of accomplishing their goals, and now how many more budding anthropologists will throw caution to the wind in order to make themselves a big name? Obscenely more, that's how many.

big dan doesn't feel good

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We should bring him chicken soup and Kool-Aid pie....

oh, teddy

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[And Senator Byrd feels like the rest of us do....]

650,000 years of this planet's co2 concentrations

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4pm, 5/13 -- I'm bumping this back up from earlier because it really is the biggest news of the day, of the year, of the decade... maybe of all time.

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Almost midnight, 5/3 -- And again....

I mean, dudes, SIX HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND YEARS!

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1am, 5/14 -- And that's just the longest we can tell from ice core samples... so far. It could be a million years... more. We might have been busily making music and money and babies and poems and hardships for each other while we were killing the planet Earth. Or maybe we were only killing everything that's alive today and after a seriously-long ice age the microbes will wake back up. I swear to God, humans are denser than the galaxies inside black holes. There's just an infinitude of not getting through.

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11am, 5/14 -- I just get madder and madder. I'm afraid to google around for this some more because the last time I checked The Nation had mentioned it on their blog in "The Notion" and so had The New York Times. On their blogs. Ahem. Not in their analog publications. That was the extent of U.S. mainstream media coverage as of the last time I checked, and this damn report was released last month! Why don't I think it's going to get any more coverage until hell has indeed frozen over?

That IS what we're talking about, here, you know... hell freezing over. Global warming is the herald, the trigger, for an ice age. So all the clowns out there giggling about being able to run around in shorts now are really people riding around in open Jeeps with machine guns blasting. They're blowing your pets and everything you think is beautiful and YOU away.

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12:15pm, 5/14 -- Hour-old bulletin explodes 99's head....

outrageous

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Like I say, LSD in my coffee... gotta be.

they name a highway after me and...

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...some drunken fool near Fresno causes a hunnert-and-eight-car pile-up on that road to hell.