[Mb-civic] Scientists Race To Head Off Lethal Potential Of Avian Flu - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Scientists Race To Head Off Lethal Potential Of Avian Flu

By David Brown, Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 23, 2005; Page A01

Robert G. Webster is watching his 40-year-old hunch about the origin of 
pandemic influenza play out before his eyes. It would be thrilling if it 
were not so terrifying.

Four decades ago, Webster was a young microbiologist from New Zealand on 
a brief sojourn in London. While he was there, he did an experiment that 
pretty much set the course of his scientific career. In just a few 
hours, he showed that the microbe that swept the globe in 1957 as "Asian 
flu" bore an unmistakable resemblance to strains of virus carried by 
certain birds in the years before.

Webster's observation was a surprise -- and a troubling one. It 
suggested an origin of the unusually virulent strains of influenza virus 
that appear two or three times each century. His hunch, that at least 
some of these pandemic strains were hybrids of bird and human flu 
viruses, was correct.

Since then, Rob Webster has become arguably the world's most important 
eye on animal influenza viruses. These days, he is deeply worried about 
what he's seeing.

Strains of influenza virus known as A/H5N1 have been spreading in wild 
and domestic birds across Southeast Asia and China since 1996. In recent 
weeks, the virus has apparently struck poultry in Siberia and Kazakhstan.

Since late 2003, about 100 million domesticated birds -- mostly chickens 
and ducks -- either have died of the virus or have been intentionally 
killed to keep the viruses from spreading. But what has Webster and 
other experts so worried are the 112 people who have been infected with 
the H5N1 "bird flu," more than half of whom have died. The fatality rate 
of 55 percent outstrips any human flu epidemic on record, including the 
epochal Spanish flu of 1918 and 1919 that killed at least 50 million people.

Why this new virus is so deadly is not entirely understood, although 
scientists have hints.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/22/AR2005082201365.html?nav=hcmodule
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