Tamiflu Developer: Swine Flu Could Have Come From Bio-Experiment Lab

[sabra]

Source: ABC News

World Health Organization Investigates Claims by Australian Scientist Adrian Gibbs

An Australian researcher claims the swine flu, which has killed at least 64 people so far, might not be a mutation that occurred naturally but a man-made product of genetic experiments accidently leaked from a laboratory -- a theory the World Health Organization is taking very seriously.

Adrian Gibbs, a scientist on the team that was behind the development of Tamiflu, says in a report he is submitting today that swine flu might have been created using eggs to grow viruses and make new vaccines, and could have been accidently leaked to the general public.

"It might be some sort of simple error that's not being recognized," Gibbs said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

In an interview with Bloomberg Television, Gibbs admitted there are other ways to explain swine flu's origin.

"One of the simplest explanations if that it's a laboratory escape, but there are lots of others," he said.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/SwineFlu/story?id=7584420&page=1

[Dreamer Tatum]

1. In other news, the inventor of water casts a suspicious gaze at the Sun nt

[Hugin]

2. K&R

:popcorn:

[Turbineguy]

3. Oh nooooooo!

We should have elected republicans. They would have kept us safe!


(Swine flu determined to attack America!)

[MercutioATC]

4. Just what this world needs...

...more conspiracy theories.

[MicaelS]

5. And I bet he wants $$$$$$$ to "investigate" its history n/t

[merwin]

6. A simple error?

Explain that to the people who died from the "simple error".

[Thothmes]

7. So much for the theory

that the capitilist evil Smithfield food hog packing operation was the source.

[uppityperson]

8. Swine Flu Not an Accident From a Lab, W.H.O. Says

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/health/policy/15flu.html

The swine flu virus did not result from a laboratory accident, the World Health Organization said Thursday, working to debunk rumors started by an Australian virologist and circulated by news outlets all over the world. “We took this very seriously,” Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the agency’s deputy director general, said of the virologist’s assertion. “But the evidence suggests that this is a naturally occurring virus, not a laboratory-derived virus.”

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The virus rumor was started by Adrian J. Gibbs, a retired plant virologist from the Australian National University, who previously published work in the journal Science questioning the idea, now accepted, that the 1918 pandemic started as a bird flu. Dr. Gibbs, who had studied the gene sequences of the swine flu virus posted on public data banks, argued that it must have been grown in eggs, the medium used in vaccine laboratories. He reached that conclusion, he said, because the new virus was not closely related to known ones and because it had more of the amino acid lysine and more mutations than typical strains of swine flu.

His theory was reported by Bloomberg News on Tuesday. Even though scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were skeptical and some prominent virologists openly derisive, news outlets have repeated and magnified the theory, adding speculation about bioterrorism that even Dr. Gibbs repudiated. He was also interviewed Thursday on the ABC News program “Good Morning America.” Dr. Fukuda said a W.H.O. panel of experts had concluded that “the hypothesis does not really stand up to scrutiny.” The lysine residues and mutation rates were typical, he said, and many swine flus seem unrelated because not enough pigs are tested each year.

(clip)

Late Thursday, Smithfield Foods reported that the Mexican health authorities had not found the new virus in herds at its huge hog-fattening operations in Veracruz, which some have blamed for the outbreak. But it was not clear what test was used; only blood tests for antibodies would show whether pigs had the virus in February, when the human outbreak is thought to have begun. ...(more@link)