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Wired article on Niman. (only eight genes in the flu virus, confirms Revere of Effect Measure in the comment below. Strunk and White would be impressed - as are we.)
Also - The Coming Plague author Laurie Garrett's Scary Near-Miss Shows Bioterrorism Vulnerabilities (The Council on Foreign Relations, Feb. 16)
In other news, Garrett resigns from Newsday, vocally. She's not impressed with the current state of journalism:
All across America news organizations have been devoured by massive corporations, and allegiance to stockholders, the drive for higher share prices, and push for larger dividend returns trumps everything that the grunts in the newsrooms consider their missions. ...The sort of in-your-face challenge that the Fourth Estate once posed for politicians has been replaced by mud-slinging, lies and, where it ought not be, timidity...
------------The mainstream media have at last started to take bird flu seriously. Now that influenzapandemic.blogspot.com is on hiatus, you'll need a new daily bird flu infosource, which would be Harry Niman of Recombinomics (in combination with Effect Measure - which does depth, not roundups)
For "White House press whores" coverage, we're keeping an eye on the Nashua Advocate as well as AmericaBlog. Kudos to Editor and Publisher for their Gannon/Guckert coverage series, most recently here.
We apologize for the desultory posting of late, but we've been busy.
2 comments:
thanks for the link, Anna. Yes, only 8 genes. The virus uses host cells for both structural and synthetic elements so can get by with fewer. Moreover the 8 genes are segmented into 8 packages which can "mix and match" (reassortment) if their is co-infection with another strain of influenza virus, leading to the kind of antigenic shift influenza A does every so often, setting up conditions for a pandemic.
Hope folks who are interested in the public health aspects of flu will visit us at Effect Measure.
revere
For what its worth, influenzapandemic.blogspot.com is back on again.
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