The couple dreamed of starting a family soon after tying the knot in 2019, around the time Taiwan became the...
Aggregated News
In mid-September last year at the fourth annual European Scientific Working group on Influenza meeting in Malta, Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands, gave a presentation on some experiments his lab had performed with the H5N1 virus, better known as the avian flu virus. Fouchier’s team, supported in part by U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), had been running experiments with ferrets, which, like humans, can also fall prey to bird flu.
The Dutch team’s aim was to create a more powerful and easily transmitted version of the avian flu, a goal that on the face of it seems disquieting and unnecessary: H5N1 as it occurs naturally already is highly potent when it passes from birds to humans. According to a FAQ on Nature’s Avian Flu website, of 169 people who contracted the disease in the outbreak that roiled Asia from January 2004 to March 2007, 168 died. Estimates of average mortality vary, but it’s generally thought that avian flu proves fatal to 50-60% of those who catch it. By contrast, in modern times...
The Dutch team’s aim was to create a more powerful and easily transmitted version of the avian flu, a goal that on the face of it seems disquieting and unnecessary: H5N1 as it occurs naturally already is highly potent when it passes from birds to humans. According to a FAQ on Nature’s Avian Flu website, of 169 people who contracted the disease in the outbreak that roiled Asia from January 2004 to March 2007, 168 died. Estimates of average mortality vary, but it’s generally thought that avian flu proves fatal to 50-60% of those who catch it. By contrast, in modern times...