Flu Dead Reveal Ghostly Secrets To Save The Living!
As the dreaded bird flu spreads it's sub-microscopic virus
tentacles across Asia, and makes an unwelcome European
appearance in Romania and Turkey, scientists have returned to
the past. They seek to unearth the hidden secrets of the dead in
order to hopefully save our generation.
The Spanish Flu or Great Influenza Pandemic killed as many as 40
to 100 million people globally during 1918-1919, and then
mysteriously disappeared. The greatest plague in history
decimated mankind - claiming more lives than the Great War. The
social effects were extreme and horrific, due to the speed of
the epidemic. AIDS killed 25 million in its first 25 years, but
the Flu Pandemic may have killed more in only 25 weeks,
beginning in September 1918.
The sufferers were "tortured" by the virus, as it consumed their
life force. Victims bled from their eyes, mouth, nose and ears.
Skin, starved of oxygen turned blue, so that doctors were unable
to distinguish between Europeans and Afro-Americans.
It is possible that the stresses of combat, possibly combined
with the effects of chemical warfare, may have weakened
soldiers' immune systems thereby increasing their vulnerability
to the influenza disease and accelerating its spread. Certainly
the close, confined quarters and mass movement of troop ships
and vehicles returning from the war fronts, advanced the flu
process. Tragically those soldiers that survived the horrors of
war, then fell to an "unseen" enemy.
Now, in October 2005, scientists claim they have found that the
avian flu that's emerging in the Far East shares some of the
same genetic characteristics as the flu virus that caused the
1918 pandemic.
Understanding what made the Spanish flu so virulent and lethal,
may lead to new vaccine targets and antiviral drugs that might
protect and treat people should the avian flu H5N1 (bird
influenza) become a pandemic.
Scientists are building protein-coding sequences of the 1918
virus. Samples of the virus were obtained from the lungs of
victims bodies, exhumed from tombs in the UK, USA and the
permafrost of Alaska.
"Using these materials, we have been able to piece together the
entire genetic coding of the 1918 virus" said Study co-author
Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, chief of the department of molecular
pathology at the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology
So as the experts search the dead for answers - and race for
vaccines and cures, we living can only wait, watch and prepare
as we remember the warning issued by The World Health
Organization's Klaus Stohr during 2004: "There is no doubt there
will be another pandemic. The number of people affected will go
beyond billions because between 25 percent and 30 percent will
fall ill. Pandemics occur when a completely new flu strain
emerges for which humans have no immunity. An influenza pandemic
will spare nobody. Every country will be affected..."