Tag Archives: CNN
SIGNS OF THE APOCALYPSE – 500 dead penguins wash up along Brazil’s beaches
- Hundreds wash ashore in Rio Grande do Sul, biologists say
- Birds are decomposed but otherwise seem unharmed
- Penguins migrate from Argentina about this time of year, biologist says
(CNN) — Marine biologists in Brazil have launched an investigation after hundreds of dead penguins washed ashore in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, they said Monday.
More than 500 birds have been found on beaches over the past week, and that figure has steadily risen over the past few days, according to experts from Brazil’s Center of Coastal and Marine Studies (Ceclimar).
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The figure has been especially puzzling for the marine scientists, who say the birds are badly decomposed but otherwise seem unhurt and without oil stains.
The discovery follows an official inquiry launched by the Peruvian government this year when close to 3,000 dolphins and more than 500 pelicans washed up along the country’s northern coast.
Mauricio Tazeres, a biologist from the Center of Coastal and Marine Studies, said “it’s actually pretty common for us to find at least some penguins but never in this number.
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“The animals usually migrate from Argentina around this time of year in search of food and warmer weather, and each year, some do wash up. But over 500 is a very, very high number, and right now, I simply do not have an explanation.
“We have collected some samples for autopsy, but the animals are so decomposed, it is going to make analysis very difficult,” he said. “The animals were a lot smaller in terms of size and weight than normal penguins, so we think it will be natural causes, but it is certainly very strange.”
PANDEMIC – Mystery illness in Cambodia solved, doctors say
Phnom Penh, Cambodia (CNN) — The cause of a mysterious illness that has claimed the lives of more than 60 Cambodian children has been determined, medical doctors familiar with the investigation told CNN on Wednesday.
A combination of pathogens, disease-causing micro-organisms, is to blame for the illness, the World Health Organization, in conjunction with the Cambodian Ministry of Health, has concluded, the doctors said.
The pathogens include enterovirus 71, which is known to cause neurological disease; streptococcus suis, which can cause infections like bacterial meningitis in people who have close contact with pigs or with pork products; and dengue, which is transmitted by mosquitoes.
The inappropriate use of steroids, which can suppress the immune system, worsened the illness in a majority of the patients, the doctors said. The World Health Organization (WHO) is expected to advise health care workers to refrain from using steroids in patients with signs and symptoms of the infection, which include severe fever, encephalitis and breathing difficulties.
While not all the microorganisms were present in each patient, doctors concluded the illness was caused by a combination of them and worsened by steroid use.
The WHO sources did not want to be identified because the results of the health organization’s investigation have not yet been made public.
“I’m very confident for the reason of the epidemic,” said Dr. Phillipe Buchy, chief of virology at the Institut Pasteur in Cambodia and one of the doctors who cracked the case.
“The first thing that goes through your mind is, is this one of the usual suspects you haven’t detected before?” said Dr. Arnaud Tarantola, chief of epidemiology and public health at the Institut Pasteur. “If it is, has it mutated, or changed in a way that it causes more severe disease? Or is it something completely new?”
On the steroids issue, Tarantola said, “When you have a dying child, you try to use what you have at hand, and they were right to try that.” But, he acknowledged, “from the cases we reviewed, almost all of the children died, and almost all of them had steroids.”
Parents face anxious wait over mystery illness
“I think we can close the case and move ahead asking different questions,” Buchy said. “Not what is the illness, but now, how long has the virus been circulating? What is the extent of the circulation of the virus? How many mild diseases are we missing? That’s the next step.”
Over the past four months, doctors at Kantha Bopha Children’s Hospitals in Phnom Penh have been faced with the mysterious syndrome, which kills children so fast that nearly all of those infected with it die within a day or two of being admitted to the hospital.
Dr. Beat Richner, head of the children’s hospitals — which cared for 66 patients affected by the illness, 64 of whom died — said that no new cases of the illness had been confirmed since Saturday.
Other hospitals in the country have reported similar cases, but far fewer than the children’s hospitals in the capital, which are the most popular.
In the last hours of their life, the children experienced a “total destruction of the alveola(e) in the lungs,” Richner said. Alveolae are the air sacs where oxygen enters the bloodstream.
Most of the children who have contracted the illness have come from the south of the country, though health officials cannot find what is known as a cluster — a lot of cases coming from one specific area.
By June 29, the WHO had been contacted and Cambodian officials were scrambling to instruct health providers across the country to spread information about the illness as quickly as possible.
Officials search for clues in disease killing Cambodia’s children
The WHO and the Cambodian authorities’ announcement of the situation drew criticism from Richner, who said they were “causing unnecessary panic.”
The WHO said the unexplained nature of the outbreak obliged it to communicate the information.
Over the weekend, lab tests linked enterovirus 71 (EV71) to some of the cases. But the tests didn’t solve the whole puzzle and health officials continued their investigations, noting the detection of other elements like streptococcus suis and dengue.
The link to EV71 does not particularly help in the treatment of the illness, as there is no effective antiviral treatment for severe EV71 infections and no vaccine is available.
In milder cases, EV71 can cause coldlike symptoms, diarrhea and sores on the hands, feet and mouth, according to the journal Genetic Vaccines and Therapy. But more severe cases can cause fluid to accumulate on the brain, resulting in polio-like paralysis and death.
Outbreaks of the enterovirus “occur periodically in the Asia-Pacific region,” according to the CDC. Brunei had its first major outbreak in 2006. China had an outbreak in 2008.
Adults’ well-developed immune systems usually can fend off the virus, but children are vulnerable to it, according to the CDC.
“It looks like (EV71) has emerged strongly, probably because it hadn’t circulated with the same intensity in the past years,” Tarantola said.
Reported cases of streptococcus suis have risen significantly in recent years, notably in Southeast Asia, according to a paper that appeared last year in Emerging Infectious Diseases, a journal published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
The rainy season in Cambodia, which lasts from May to October, is a key problem in trying to control diseases like dengue. Because of a lack of indoor plumbing in many homes, people collect rainwater in vats, creating potential breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
In Cambodia, as with many places around the world, parents first try treating their child at home. If that doesn’t work, they typically then go to a local clinic. A hospital visit, which often involves a long trip, is a last resort.
CDC visitors exposed to deadly germs?
Washington (CNN) — It’s a highly secured, sophisticated research lab studying deadly diseases such as bird flu, monkeypox, tuberculosis and rabies.
It’s in a facility called Building 18, which cost taxpayers $214 million.
And now, the Biosafety Level 3 lab at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta is also the subject of a congressional investigation after a potentially dangerous airflow leak at that lab, CNN has learned.
The leak occurred on February 16, when air flowed the wrong way out of a germ lab into a clean-air corridor, rather than through the powerful HEPA filter that cleans the air, congressional sources and CDC officials said. Visitors touring the facility were in the clean corridor when they observed a puff of air being pushed out from the lab through a slot in a door window.
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If experiments had been under way at the time of that air leak, experts say, unprotected visitors could have been exposed to deadly germs, although an epidemic would have been unlikely.
According to U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, a Texas Republican and a medical doctor, the House Energy and Commerce Committee has asked the CDC for documents about that incident. The request came in the wake of a report on internal CDC e-mails about the incident, first reported by USA Today last week.
“The biggest concern was that there was a contingent of visitors who were walking through the building,” Burgess said. “And had one of those people been stricken or made ill or worse, obviously that would have been devastating.”
The lab handles small mammals such as rats, ferrets and mice as part of its experiments with pathogens, according to CDC officials. They say animals were in the lab at the time of the air leak, but they were secured in filtered cages.
CDC officials say the lab was clean, was not active at the time, and no one got infected.
“At no time during recent incidents featured in the media were CDC workers or the public in harm’s way,” agency spokesman Tom Skinner said. “This unique facility features multiple security layers specifically designed to protect workers and the public in the event of an incident.”
In a statement released to CNN, Burgess’ committee said, “We will actively work to find out if there are additional concerns or incidents associated with Building 18. Any anomaly or breach is of concern, and we will work to ensure the integrity of the facility is maintained and that our scientists are safe.”
There has been at least one other safety-related incident in that same building where February’s air leak occurred.
In 2008, it was discovered that a high-containment lab door was sealed with duct tape. That incident was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and confirmed to CNN by Skinner.
Robert Hawley, former safety chief at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, said the CDC has many safety layers in place at its labs. Hawley says researchers at the Biosafety Level 3 lab work in biosafety “cabinets” within the lab itself.
“Nothing is handled outside that cabinet,” Hawley said. “So they’re working with minute amounts of material, and the chances of aerosol are negligible.”
But there are questions about a possible cover-up.
In an internal e-mail, reported by USA Today, CDC biologist Kismet Scarborough said the centers “… will do anything … to hide the fact that we have serious problems with the airflow and containment in this whole building.”
CNN has not been able to independently verify that e-mail. But in response, Skinner said, “CDC will continue to take an open, transparent and inclusive approach to address any safety challenge in a manner that will ensure the safety of our workforce and the public.”
Skinner said the agency “intends to cooperate fully with Rep. Burgess and the committee to address any questions they may have about Building 18 at CDC.”
Mutant bird flu would be airborne
Mutant bird flu would be airborne, scientists say
Here’s what it takes to make a deadly virus transmissible through the air: as few as five genetic mutations, according to a new study.
This research, published in the journal Science, is the second of two controversial studies to finally be released that examines how the H5N1 bird flu virus can be genetically altered and transmitted in mammals. Publication of both studies had been delayed many months due to fears that the research could be misused and become a bio-security threat.
Although these particular engineered forms of H5N1 have not been found in nature, the virus has potential to mutate enough such that it could become airborne.
H5N1 influenza can be deadly to people, but in its natural forms it does not easily transfer between people through respiratory droplets, as far as scientists know. The World Health Organization has recorded 355 humans deaths from it out of 602 cases, although some research has questioned this high mortality rate.
The journals Science and Nature had agreed to postpone the publication of the two studies related to the genetically altered virus.
In January, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity recommended that this research be published without “methods or details” that terrorists might be able to use for biological weapons. The board also said the data could assist in preparing for a possible future outbreak, however.
Then in February, the World Health Organization convened a meeting, at which the recommendation was to publish the studies – just not yet. In April, the National Institutes of Health chimed in, also recommending publication.
The first study to be published on the topic was in the journal Nature, and was led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka. It was released in May.
The other research group, which authored the new study in Science, was led by Ron Fouchier at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Both Kawaoka and Fouchier’s groups created a mutated version of H5N1 that made it easier to transmit from mammal to mammal. They used ferrets because these animals are a good approximation for how viruses behave in humans.
Fouchier’s study examines what mutations would be necessary to get the virus airborne. He and colleagues found five mutations consistent in a form of the H5N1 flu virus that could spread among ferrets through the air.
None of the ferrets died after developing the flu, the researchers said.
In a separate analysis, researchers looked at the likelihood that an airborne avian flu virus would evolve on its own from the H5N1 currently found in nature.
This study, also published in Science this week, looked at nearly 4,000 strains of influenza virus and frequently found two of the five mutations that appear to be involved in airborne transmission. These two mutations have been found in viruses from both birds and humans, although not in naturally-occurring H5N1 strains.
Derek Smith of the University of Cambridge, who co-authored that study, said at a press briefing that it’s possible that only three mutations are necessary for the virus to evolve.
Smith’s group also did mathematical modeling to look at whether the other mutations could evolve when the bird flu jumps to a human or other mammal.
“We find that it is possible for such a virus to evolve three mutations within a single host,” Smith said during the press call.
If it takes four for five mutations to become airborne, that would be more difficult – but it’s unclear just how likely it would be, Smith said.
While the Nature study looked at how a bird flu virus could become airborne through mutations and re-assortment with other viruses, the latest research in Science suggests mutations alone could do the trick.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told reporters that the benefits from the Science study, in terms stimulating ideas and pursuing ways to understand the transmissibility, adaptability and pathogenesis of the virus, outweigh the risks that someone will use the data for nefarious purposes.
“Does that mean that there’s no risk? No, of course not. I can’t tell you at all
that there’s no risk. But the benefits in my mind outweigh the risks,” he said.
Making the research available generally will hopefully spark input on this topic from researchers in a wide variety of fields, he said.
It is technologically possible to create vaccine based on the genetic code of a flu virus strain including this one, researchers said. Several companies are already making H5N1 vaccines.
Research is ongoing to accelerate the amount of vaccine doses available by using adjuvants, which are agents that modify the effects of vaccines, Fauci said. There is also work ongoing into using computational sequencing to anticipate every possible influenza strain that could emerge, such that a databank could be established to prepare for the outbreak of any one of them, he said.
“Right now we’re in a much, much better position than we were when we had vaccine available after the peak of the 2009 H1N1 two years ago,” Fauci said.
Force the White House to Plan for the Zombie Apocalypse
Obama is grabbed by some zombies because he had no plan.Though a recent string of bizarre cannibalism incidents in Miami, Maryland, and Canada does not necessarily indicate that the zombie apocalypse has commenced, it’s really only a matter of time until it does. And what then? Amazingly, it doesn’t appear that the Obama administration has a plan for dealing with the greatest threat to our nation since terrorist anchor babies.
Luckily, there’s a solution. In 2011, the Obama White House created a website,We the People, where the American people can post and sign petitions on any issue they desire. If a petition receives 25,000 signatures within 30 days, “White House staff will review it, ensure it’s sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response.” So today, out of a sense of civic duty, we started a petition calling on the Obama administration to go public with a plan for the zombie apocalypse.
The petition reads:
Every government’s primary responsibility is the safety of its citizens. And yet the Obama administration has thus far failed to produce a plan for dealing the with the zombie apocalypse which, according to the Internet, could happen at any moment.
What’s the protocol for distributing vaccines/machine guns? Where will ragtag bands of uncontaminated, racially diverse strangers find safe haven? If President Obama turns into a zombie, will Joe Biden become president, or will Zombie Obama still be president?
These are just some of the questions that deserve serious consideration from the White House.
Please take a moment of your time to sign the petition and pass it on to others. Your future as a fully sentient human being may depend on it.