Black Death 'is lying in wait'

[Champ]

The Black Death, which killed 23m people in the middle ages, could be lying dormant and could strike again, say researchers.

Their claim is based on the theory that the pandemic was triggered not by bubonic plague but by another virus.

The theory is outlined in a new book by Professor Christopher Duncan and Dr Susan Scott of Liverpool University.

"We believe this virus is merely lying in wait, ready to strike again," said Professor Duncan.

The Black Death is thought to have caused the deaths of up to 200m people worldwide over the past 1,500 years. In the 14th century alone, around 23m people are thought to have died after the disease ravaged much of Asia and Europe.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3735943.stm

[Bluebear]

1. Please don't give Tom Ridge any more ideas

We'll have Orange Alerts out the yin yang.

[kentuck]

2. And Rumsfeld knows exactly where it is hiding...

Just north of Baghdad...

[Andy_Stephenson]

4. yes...a little north, east ,

south and west of bagdad.

[Eloriel]

20. near Tikrit n/t

[K-W]

3. Yah because the global population has been so immobale and isolated

seems unlikely that a disease that was able to wipe out a middle ages population would require more technology and population than we have now to rear its ugly head again.

That said, the threat of disease is very real in an increasingly populace world.

[Deja Q]

12. Not to mention a world where one person can go to any continent and pickup

a disease once indigenous to that area and communicate it elsewhere. Sound familiar?

[smirkymonkey]

5. I think it is treatable with antibiotics

and work is being conducted on a vaccine. Without treatment, the plague will end up killing around 60% of it's victims.

[DemBones DemBones]

7. Antibiotics don't work on viruses. . . so IF they are correct

that a virus was actually the cause of the Black Death, antibiotics won't help.
IF they are correct.

[smirkymonkey]

13. However, Bubonic Plague IS a

bacterial infection.

"The bubonic plague, which killed millions in Europe in the Middle Ages, is now one of the most deadly agents available to terrorists...
Around 2,500 cases of plague occur naturally each year across the world."



"It is caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium that can infect rodents. It is usually transferred to humans by fleas."

"After someone has been infected, symptoms including fever, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and swollen lymph nodes which ooze blood, develop within two to eight days."

[dumpster_baby]

14. also, Bubonic is much easier to beat if you are well nourished

Bubonic is all over the American west, but it does not kill that many people anymore, and one reason is because people are well nourished.

[mike1963]

6. Oh, great...another ray of sunshine...

:evilgrin:
:eyes:

[DemBones DemBones]

8. BBC erred in saying "another virus," suggesting that

bubonic plague is caused by a virus. It's NOT caused by a virus but by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis, which is carried by rodents, including rodents in our own southwestern states.

[Jacobin]

9. There's a case or two of it in the American southwest every now and then

It's treatable with antibiotics.

Sounds like this guys is thinking up shit to freak people out about.

There's enough stuff out there now to worry about without dragging this up.

[Retrograde]

10. um, it hasn't really ever gone away

The bacterium that causes bubonic plague is not uncommon in the Western US: see http://www.emedicine.com/EMERG/topic428.htm for example.

Fortunately, it can usually be treated if caught early.

linda

[Deja Q]

11. AIDS variant? AIDS has a knack of mutating...

All AIDS need do is find a way to spread via more common means and it's toodles to humankind.

Didn't the black death get spread by rats?

[DemoTex]

18. "Toodles to humankind" .. AIDS or Black-death (or other)?

Now THAT would save the beautiful planet earth. Might not be bad. Ain't gonna be no Jesus in that scenario. Max nix. A few million years of re-generation, on a cooler earth, with the zealots out of the breeding, (and - for Christs' sake! - out of education and governmental processes), the amoeba can try again. Hope they fucking get it right next time around. This is embarrassing.

[AmandaRuth]

15. DON'T KILL YOUR CATS!!!

During that time period, people thought that large animals carried the disease, so they killed horses, cows, pigs, dogs, and most tragicly, cats. The Black Death is carried by a type of flea on black rats and they spread to humans. Then they bite their skins and the disease spreads very rapidly. It's like the flu: You sneeze at school, the whole class gets germs. You show up in a fur dress in the 14th century with fleas in it, the whole place gets the Black Death fleas lodged in their clothes. Nice thought, eh?

MNILUVAMERICAHATEBUSH!!!

[Valerie5555]

16. In the Dark Ages, CATS were regarded as witches or something like that and

maybe the plague could have been taken as some sort of retribution on the part of the "divine powers that be," for the "purr - secution," or oops persecution of cats.

[SpiralHawk]

17. "The Black Wind of Death"

Don't forget this ugly threat, uttered at the US of A this Spring, 2004. They said it was nearly ready...

http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/03-15-04/discussion.cgi.2.html

[Valerie5555]

19. Had the Al Quaeda types worked in the fast food industry, I wonder what

else they would threaten the US with other than the "grease of death," ooh we're all :scared:.

[NNN0LHI]

21. Forget about the Black Death

We already have got all the White Death we can handle emanating from the White House as it is.

Don

[slaveplanet]

22. New research suggests the tiny number of people who are immune to AIDS

http://www.healthfinder.gov/news/newsstory.asp?docID=516072

MONDAY, Nov. 17 (HealthDayNews) -- New research suggests the tiny number of people who are immune to AIDS are the descendants of Europeans who developed resistance to smallpox in the Middle Ages.

"Smallpox has left a signature on our genetic makeup, providing a benefit to us 700 years later," says study coauthor Alison P. Galvani, an epidemiologist at the University of California at Berkeley.

If Galvani is correct, she may have punctured the prevailing wisdom that the prime suspect behind AIDS immunity is bubonic plague, the deadly disease that wiped out a third of Europe in the 14th century.

The new research is "fascinating and provocative," says Cheryl Ann Winkler, a genetic scientist at the National Cancer Institute who helped develop the plague theory in the late 1990s.

Unfortunately, the findings may reveal more about the past than the future. Experts don't expect their research to have any effect on treatment of people with AIDS.

snip-

In total, about 1 percent of people descended from Northern Europeans are virtually immune to AIDS. They share one trait in common: a pair of mutated genes that prevent their immune cells from developing a "receptor" that lets HIV, the AIDS virus, break in. It's like a lock and key, Galvani explains: The virus can't gain entry because the lock isn't there.

To be born with a pair of the mutated genes, people must inherit them from both parents. About 10 percent to 15 percent of descendants of Northern Europeans have just one mutated gene, which provides limited protection: It takes longer for those infected with the HIV to actually develop AIDS.