Turns out, they're not doing such a good job with containing the bird flu outbreak at an English farm - it's now linked to the adjacent processing plant, and more turkeys have fallen sick at other sheds. My question is: other sheds? You mean they weren't even culling all the poultry on the same farm? Oy.

And now comes news infected meat may ( Read more... )

So, how did H5N1 (bird flu) get into a turkey farm in the U.K.? A wild bird, of course! It must have flown in through a vent. So what if birds aren't migrating now? No, no, the virus couldn't possibly have been imported from Hungary, where there have been outbreaks, and where the Bernard Matthews company owns plants. Bernard Matthews sez ( Read more... )

Recently I linked the story about using the common cold virus against cancer. Last week I saw another awesome-sounding potential breakthrough, this one using a drug that already exists: A drug called DCA used to treat rare metabolic disorders that kills almost all cancers by reactivating cancerous cells' mitochondria, which then cause cell death ( Read more... )

The House has passed a bill expanding federal funding for stem cell research and a bill requiring the government to negotiate with drug companies for lower drug prices for Medicare recipients. It's hard to say which strikes deeper at the heart of Republican "values". Sure, the first bill tacitly admits that a handful of cells in a freezer ( Read more... )

Now we know: Ted Haggard has admitting to buying methamphetimine. He says he never used it. Supply your own "didn't inhale" joke here.

Also, I love how the BBC headline calls him "Sex-row US pastor."

Let's see, what else...

+ Nuclear secrets were online because they wanted to "unleash the blogosphere". Sadly, No commented on it last spring. ( Read more... )

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... And it's just getting worse. Reuters says half a million people have fled in the face of Typhoon Saomai, expected to hit just south of the city of Wenzhou. It's looking to be the biggest storm to hit China in forty years. The BBC says 1.5 million have been evacuated.

More than 1.5 million people have been evacuated from their homes in ( Read more... )

So caia, you say, what's been happening with that bird flu thing lately?

I'm glad I pretended you asked! Here's some of the recent news:

The World Health Organization is warning that we may see another upswing in human bird flu cases this winter, based on when cases have happened in the last three years. They also say that the risk of the ( Read more... )

One thing that really ruffles my feathers are articles about bird flu and/or pandemic flu, published by respectable news organizations, sometimes written by supposed "experts", that give the public misleading or false information. The worst offenders are often people with specific agendas. I mentioned the other day how poultry farmers in this ( Read more... )

NY Times: Human Flu Transfers May Exceed Reports. (BugMeNot NYT logins)

The numbers are still relatively small, and they do not mean that the virus has mutated to pass easily between people - a change that could touch off a worldwide epidemic. All the clusters of cases have been among relatives or in nurses who were in long, close contact with ( Read more... )