HorsesAss.Org » Blog Archive » Swine Flu Update: U.S. Declares “Public Health Emergency”

HorsesAss.Org » Blog Archive » Swine Flu Update: U.S. Declares “Public Health Emergency”: "Also, we won’t have to choose whether to accept vaccination for two reasons:

One, if the vaccine is effective then those who “Choose” not to be vaccinated are taking their own risks (besides, there will probably not be enough doses for everyone, anyways).

Also, if this is a new strain then there ARE NO vaccines available and the flu medications that are available are not particularly effective (Tamiflu barely shortens the duration of the regular flu).

You are a little but correct but mostly wrong. We do yet have a vaccine. However, we will. BUT the real issue is not when we have one but what strategy do we take to prevent a similar virus from killing us all?

The universal vaccination strategies for polio and small pox worked. Leaving some people free to choose NOT to he vaccinated is the same as allowing them to choose TO be hosts. As long as any virus has a host, it can evolve.

Umm, the genomes stuff is just plain silly. why would anyone want their entire genome published? Anyway, it would be a waste of money since most of the genome is interons anyways.

1. You mean introns. Actually most of the genome is not in introns or exons but in large regions that are only now becoming understood. Studies of cancer, for example, show that a lot of the information comes from regions that do not code for any “gene.” Moreover, most of the function of the genome, including viral insertion sites, now appears to be in noncoding (that is non protein making) sequence.

2. There are two major reasons for making genomes public. The first is that we will at the very least need a large number of genomes to understand how less frequent variations at common sites determine disease. A recent series in the New England Journal points out that the current “SNP” approach is based on far too few folks to serve this need.
The second is that it seems very clear that a large part of all diseases is determined by our genetic diversity. Since we clearly are going to state run medicine, why should everyone have to pay more so docs can guess how to treat the Luddites?

I assume you are aware that the costs of genomes are plummeting? A fairly dense genotype (say a few million markers) can be had for a few hundred dollars now and entire genomes will fall below 1000 in the near future.

Finally there is the supposed issue of privacy. I am FAR more worried about the effin insurance companies having access to my medical records (which they now do have despite HIPPA). As long as reasonable efforts are made to protect sensitive information on ethnicity, and as long as the right to health care is assured, how is anyone hurt if we all have our genomes available?

Let me point out that your genome is ALREADY PUBLIC. Unless you coat yourself in plastic, do not breathe or shit, for a small sum we can sequence you now. You leave your identity card around every time you pee. Even if we all had our genomes done, the major issue wold be how that data are used and kept confidential ..no different from your credit card records!

I do agree that this is a potential public

In 1918, the flu killed more people than WWI. It killed healthy young people with strong immune systems - unlike most of the flu strains since. It may be that these people generated too much cell mediated immunity that led to the complications (too much inflammation) of the flu. What is needed is something that can enhance cell mediated immunity yet suppress too much inflammation, at the same time.

First the issue is NOT just cell mediated immunity. The innate immune response and humoral immunity are involved as well as issue like your underlying fitness.

Second, your bet on this sounds very much like the bets most pharmas make. A pill to relieve flu symptoms while allowing the disease to recur will make a lot more money than a tool that wipes it out.

Third, my own guess is that viruses are so embedded in our biology that we can not wipe them out. The line between a virus and a functional piece of nucleotide is pretty vague, there may ven e functional viruses .. that is sequences that WORK by moving from cell to cell or even host to host. Are you familiar with the field of co-evolution?"