Growing concerns over 'in the air' transmission of Ebola

[dipsydoodle]

Canadian scientists have shown that the deadliest form of the ebola virus could be transmitted by air between species.

In experiments, they demonstrated that the virus was transmitted from pigs to monkeys without any direct contact between them.

The researchers say they believe that limited airborne transmission might be contributing to the spread of the disease in some parts of Africa.

They are concerned that pigs might be a natural host for the lethal infection.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20341423

[ReRe]

1. Oh Lord....

Don't let them take my pork! But if I had to choose which to lose, I guess pork would become a beautiful memory. I sure don't want to die by E-Bola.

[Nonhlanhla]

2. Pigs really are filthy

There are underlying scientific reasons for kosher laws, I have always believed. The reality is that pigs, if left to their own devices, will eat anything. So they can carry lots of diseases. They also eat dead people sometimes, like that farmer in Oregon recently. My uncle who fought in the border war between South Africa and Angola years ago, told me how he saw the pigs eating human corpses, and that is why he never ate pork. Of course, with proper farm conditions, pork is just fine, and I admit I do love me some bacon. But I understand why pigs are not considered fit to eat by many.

That said, airborne Ebola is frightening beyond words.

[FlaGranny]

3. Only because people make them that way.

Pigs are not naturally filthy. Yes, they will eat nearly anything, they are omnivores like us, but lack inhibitions on what to eat. In the wild they eat anything and everything, much like bears and raccoons. They do eat carrion, but maybe it tastes like aged beef.

[Nonhlanhla]

6. Oh, I know...

...that pigs are actually quite clean in their habits. But by "filthy" I mean that they will eat anything, and thus often become disease carriers.

Interesting thing about religious food rules: it often seems to correspond with common sense knowledge about which foods are healthy for us and which not. E.g. pigs, because they are omnivores. Also shellfish, because they are bottom feeders.

Ugh on the carrion!

[pasto76]

7. shellfish are not 'bottom feeders"

bivalves are filter feeders. Crustaceans scavenge and are also predators. Like almost everything out in the natural world.

the religious rules are completely arbitrary - people still get sick from food every day. Its called poor hygiene/sanitation.

Your assertion that 'eating anything' produces disease carriers is just baseless. The porcine retroviruses are pretty complex, not because of what they eat.

[Nonhlanhla]

10. OK

OK, I'll take the correction on "bottom feeders," since I am not a scientist an don't claim to be. I was using perhaps less than scientific language to describe scavenging, although the term "bottom feeders" is often used to describe shellfish.

When it comes to religious rules, we'll have to differ. Today the rules have become arbitrary, but if you lived in ancient times, with less than desirable sanitary conditions, some of those rules actually made sense, and I suspect some of them arose from common sense observation. I myself don't follow any dietary laws, but I have just found it interesting to see that some of the rules, within the context of ancient times, made sort of sense.

[graham4anything]

4. We need new vaccines and fast. Even faster. For any and all things

a little prick goes a long long way to saving mankind

and the quackDrWakefields should STFU

[dipsydoodle]

5. There is no vaccine for ebola, marburg whatever

Commercial ebola vaccine 'unlikely' say researchers http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19112510

[graham4anything]

8. In the article, it can be done soon, but in reality money may not allow it-UNLESS OF COURSE

Gene Olinger, a virologist at the US Army Research Institute of Infectious Disease at Fort Detrick in Maryland, told BBC News: "With the current funding, if it doesn't change, I would say there should be a vaccine in five to seven years. It could double or triple it if the funding goes away."

There is also a big concern over the lack of a large pharmaceutical company which might be willing to develop and market a vaccine for ebola. Since the disease was first discovered in 1976, slightly more than 2,200 people have been infected. And outbreaks have been almost impossible to predict.

[Odin2005]

9. OH SHIT!

[Bill USA]

11. oh jesus!

[charlie and algernon]

12. that could be horrific

forget swine flu or avian flu, a lethal Ebola strain that's airborne will do some serious fucking damage to the human race.


From The Hot Zone:
"Ebola Reston may be, in fact, the most dangerous of all the filovirus sisters, because of its seeming ability to travel rather easily through the air...A tiny change in its genetic code, and it might turn into a cough and take out the human race....The experts do not doubt that a virus can hop around the world in a matter of days" [The Hot Zone, pp. 370-371].