THE WAR ON MOTHER NATURE: The BP Oil Spill Disaster - Petroleum Products From The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Linked To Deaths Of Newborn Dolphins!

Researchers investigated the deaths of perinatal dolphins, like this one, found in regions affected by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.© Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries

April 12, 2016 - GULF OF MEXICO - Scientists have finalized a four-year study of newborn and fetal dolphins found stranded on beaches in the northern Gulf of Mexico between 2010 and 2013. Their study, reported in the journal Diseases of Aquatic Organisms, identified substantial differences between fetal and newborn dolphins found stranded inside and outside the areas affected by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The study team evaluated 69 perinatal common bottlenose dolphins in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, the areas most affected by the spill, and 26 others found in areas unaffected by the spill. The work was conducted as part of an effort to investigate an "unusual mortality event" in the Gulf primarily involving bottlenose dolphins, beginning in early 2010 and continuing into 2014.

Scientists saw higher numbers of stranded perinatal dolphins in the spill zone in 2011 than in other years, particularly in Mississippi and Alabama, the researchers report. The young dolphins, which died in the womb or shortly after birth, "were significantly smaller than those that stranded during previous years and in other geographic locations," they wrote.

Bottlenose dolphin gestation takes about 380 days, so perinatal dolphins that died in the early months of 2011 could have been exposed in the womb to petroleum products released the previous year, said University of Illinois veterinary diagnostic laboratory professor Kathleen Colegrove, who led the study. Colegrove works in the Chicago-based Zoological Pathology Program at the U. of I.

"Dolphin dams losing fetuses in 2011 would have been in the earlier stages of pregnancy in 2010 during the oil spill," she said.

The researchers report that 88 percent of the perinatal dolphins found in the spill zone had lung abnormalities, including partially or completely collapsed lungs. That and their small size suggest that they died in the womb or very soon after birth—before their lungs had a chance to fully inflate. Only 15 percent of those found in areas unaffected by the spill had this lung abnormality, the researchers said.

The team also found that the spill-zone dolphins were "particularly susceptible to late-term pregnancy failures, signs of fetal distress and development of in utero infections including brucellosis," a bacterial infection that can affect the brain, lungs, bones and reproductive function. Extensive testing found no evidence that an unusual or highly pathogenic Brucella strain was involved.

"These findings support that pregnant dolphins experienced significant health abnormalities that contributed to increased fetal deaths or deaths of dolphin neonates shortly after birth," Colegrove said.

A previous study by many of the same researchers revealed that nonperinatal bottlenose dolphins stranded in the spill zone after the spill were much more likely than other stranded dolphins to have severe lung and adrenal gland damage "consistent with petroleum product exposure."

"These diseases in pregnant dolphins likely led to reproductive losses," Colegrove said.

"Our new findings add to the mounting evidence from peer-reviewed studies that exposure to petroleum compounds following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill negatively impacted the reproductive health of dolphin populations living in the oil spill footprint in the northern Gulf of Mexico," said Dr. Teri Rowles, a veterinarian with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program and a co-author on the study.

More information: KM Colegrove et al. Fetal distress and in utero pneumonia in perinatal dolphins during the Northern Gulf of Mexico unusual mortality event, Diseases of Aquatic Organisms (2016). DOI: 10.3354/dao02969


- PHYS.

 

OMEN: Plagues & Pestilences - Is It Alien, Fish Or Just Foul, "MUTANT" Sea Creature With A Nose, Feet, Tail And WING Baffles Caribbean Island?!

While it has scales, the fish (shown upside down) also has two strange feet, complete with toes.
(Photo: The Sun/Wessex News)

February 4, 2016 - CARRIACOU - An “alien-looking” creature likened to “something out of a sci-fi horror film” has caused a stir in the Grenadine island of Carriacou.

The fishy story began when the strange-looking specimen was caught in the port of Windward, reportedly giving some seasoned fishermen quite a fright.

The foot-long fish reportedly had humanoid “feet” complete with toes, which allowed it to walk across the ocean floor, a “perfect human nose,” wings and scales.

And the apparent hybrid, whether fish or fowl, had disbelieving fishermen stumped.

One islander said “Everyone crowded round to look – nobody had ever seen anything like it.

“Quite a few people were pretty scared and thought it looked like something out of a sci-fi horror film.”

Veteran fisherman Hope McLawrence, 74, who found himself eyeball to eyeball with the “alien” creature when he hauled in his nets, admitted he was baffled.

He said the foot-long beast had two feet with toes, no fin, a long bone on its back and “a perfect human nose immediately above its mouth.”

“I have never discovered anything like this before. The wings and tail look extremely complicated,” he noted.

McLawrence, a master fisherman with more than fifty years’ experience in the industry, added: “By the look of the creature it cannot swim but apparently walks on the sea bed.

“This has shocked me to a considerable extent since I never thought that a creature like this even existed, much less in the harbour of these shallow, friendly waters.

“This is like a mystery and breathes a chill with this discovery,” he indicated.

The 'alien fish' was caught on the island of Carriacou, a few miles from Grenada (stock image)

The attention-grabbing creature is believed to be a frogfish, an ambush predator that can eat almost anything that will fit into its mouth, which can expand to 12 times its normal size to accommodate prey such as fish, crabs and shrimp, as well as other frogfish.

Frogfish, a type of anglerfish, are masters of disguise and have a textured exterior that aids in their camouflage. They vary in colour and often have unique spines or bumps that change with their surroundings.

Their amazing ability to camouflage themselves serves as protection from predators and may explain why they have not been spotted by Carriacou fishermen before.

Unlike the Carriacou discovery, however, frogfish do not have scales.

According to the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI), frogfish lack a swim bladder and use their modified pectoral fins to walk or run across the seafloor.

They can be found in tropical and subtropical oceans and seas off the coasts of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australia. - Caribbean 360.

DISASTER PRECURSORS: Omen – The Latest Incidents Of Strange Animal Behavior, Mass Animal Die-Offs, Appearance Of Rare Creatures And Warnings From Mother Nature!

November 20, 2014 - EARTH - The following constitutes the latest reports of unusual and symbolic animal behavior, mass die-offs, beaching and stranding of mammals, and the appearance of rare creatures.

Virus devastating sea stars along Pacific Coast identified

This is a SSWD-affected star. The fatal disease leads to behavioral changes, lesions, loss of appendages, and disintegration.  © Neil McDaniel

Scientists have now explained the mysteriously sudden appearance of a disease that has decimated sea stars on the North American Pacific Coast.

Museum biological collections are the records of life on Earth and as such, they are frequently used to investigate serious environmental issues. When public health officials were concerned about the levels of mercury in fish and birds, for example, scientists studied museum specimens to assess historical changes in mercury contamination. Eggs in museum collections were analyzed to establish the connection between DDT, thinning eggshells, and the decline in bird populations. And now, specimens from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) have helped explain the mysteriously sudden appearance of a disease that has decimated sea stars on the North American Pacific Coast.

In a paper published Monday, November 17, 2014 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Cornell University microbiologist Ian Hewson and colleagues identify the Sea Star Associated Densovirus (SSaDV) virus as the microbe responsible for Sea Star Wasting Disease (SSWD). NHM Curator of Echinoderms Gordon Hendler and Collections Manager Cathy Groves, along with scientists from universities and aquariums along the coast (including NHM neighbor, the California Science Center), collaborated in the study.

Since June 2013, the largest die-off of sea stars ever recorded has swept the Pacific Coast. At least 20 different species of sea stars have been affected -- including iconic species like the "ochre star" and the multi-armed "sunflower star" -- and many populations of sea stars from Southern Alaska to Baja California have already disappeared.

Their large-scale disappearance is anticipated to have a serious and long-lasting ecological impact on coastal habitats, because sea stars are voracious predators, with a key role in regulating the ecology of the ocean floor.

Museum samples prove that the virus has existed at a low level for at least the past 72 years -- it was detected in preserved sea stars collected in 1942, 1980, 1987, and 1991. The study suggests the disease may have recently risen to epidemic levels because of sea star overpopulation, environmental changes, or mutation of the virus.

The study detected the virus on particles suspended in seawater, as well as in sediment, and showed that it is harbored in animals related to sea stars, such as sea urchins and brittle stars. Likely it can be transported by ocean currents, accounting for its rapid, widespread dispersal in the wild. Since the die-off began, the disease has caused a mass mortality of captive sea stars in aquariums on the Pacific Coast, although it did not spread in aquariums that sterilize inflowing seawater with UV light.
"There are 10 million viruses in a drop of seawater, so discovering the virus associated with a marine disease can be like looking for a needle in a haystack," Hewson said. In fact, the densovirus is the first and only virus identified in sea stars. However, its discovery will enable scientists to study how the virus infects sea stars and trace it in the ocean. Further research could reveal how the virus invades its host, why kills some sea stars, and why other species are unaffected.

Research might also identify factors that triggered the ongoing plague and help to predict or forestall similar events in the future.

"A recent publication highlighted examples of innovative studies for which museum time-series were integral in identifying responses to environmental change and bemoaned general decline in the growth of museum collections," said NHM's Hendler. "Fortunately, we bucked the trend and intentionally collected common, local species of sea stars, which made it possible to detect SSaDV in specimens from NHM!" - Science Daily.

Keeper at UK's Whipsnade Zoo trampled by rhino

Behan the rhino with her new calf at Whipsnade Zoo.
© Masons

The keeper was tramped by the beast as he tended to a rhino and her calf early this morning.

It's not clear what caused the animal to attack.
The man, who is in his 50s, suffered chest, abdomen and pelvis injuries after the animal attacked inside its enclosure.

He was helped out of the water by zoo staff, and was taken by ambulance to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge in a serious but stable condition.

He was given pain relief at the scene for his injuries

A Whipsnade Zoo spokeswoman said: 'At approximately 8.15am today one of our keepers was injured at Whipsnade Zoo.

'Emergency services were immediately called and the keeper involved was treated by paramedics at the scene and has now been taken to hospital.'

Dave Tamarro, of the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust, said: 'When we arrived it was clear that the patient had received a number of injuries, including injuries to the chest, abdomen and pelvis.

A Bedfordshire Police spokesman said: 'We were called to Whipsnade Zoo at around 8.25am. Our role was to assist the other emergency services.' - Metro.

Hippopotamus kills 13 people, including 12 children in Niger

Twelve children and a villager have been killed in a hippopotamus attack on a boat near the Niger capital Niamey earlier this week, officials say.

Twelve children and a villager have been killed in a hippopotamus attack on a boat near Niger's capital Niamey earlier this week, officials say.

The students, aged 12 to 13, died when their boat transporting them across the Niger River was flipped by the hippopotamus on Monday.

A number of students in the West African nation take such boats to attend school on the other side of the river.

"Ultimately it was 12 students, including seven girls and five boys, who died after the attack," minister of secondary education Aichatou Oumani said.

A villager on the same boat was also killed, according to an official in Libore, the village near the site of the accident.

An earlier toll had spoken of two deaths, 11 missing and five survivors. At least 18 people were aboard the boat, mostly students.

"We have already given the order for the animal to be identified and killed," governor of the Tillaberi region Hassoumi Djabirou said.

Game wardens shot dead a hippopotamus last year after it killed a teenager in Niamey.

Hippopotamus with young in tow are the most aggressive, even attacking cattle that come to graze on the banks of the Niger River, experts said. - Australia Plus.

Wild boar viciously attacks woman walking with dogs in Gordon Valley, California

A wild boar allegedly gored a woman several times as she was walking with her dogs.

The woman is still being treated for her injuries. She was walking her two dogs in the Gordon Valley area last week, when the boar attacked for apparently no reason.

"It come from behind and just knocked her down. And she kinda yelled and screamed,"Linda Bushey, who is neighbors with the woman, said.

After the initial attack, the woman thought the wild animal was leaving and tried to stand up. But the boar came back at her.

WATCH: Vicious wild boar attacks woman walking with dogs.

Its razor sharp tusks cut the woman three times, injuring her legs and arm. She grabbed her two dogs.

"Held on to them and stayed hunkered down real quiet and he finally left," rancher Tim Wellman said.

She reported the attack to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, who are still investigating the incident.

Lt. Patrick Foy with the department says this could be the first unprovoked attack of a wild boar in California's history.

Earlier this week, a team of three, including Wellman, hunted down the boar.

"Reached over the pig, and I got rid of Grover out of the way, and I just shot straight down through the neck with a pistol," Wellman said.

He said the boar was unmistakable, with a distinguishing trait.

"He left one big foot track, because it was three-legged, that foot had grown huge," Wellman added.

They believe they have eliminated the threat of a future attack.

- FOX 40.

EUROPEAN VAMPIRISM: The War On Mother Nature - The 2010 BP Oil Spill Left Oily Ring On The Seafloor The Size Of Rhode Island; About 10 Million Gallons Of Oil Over 1,200 Square Miles!

"The biggest problem on the planet is not some devilish supernatural entity locked in an eternal struggle for human souls, or for that matter shape-shifting reptilian aliens manipulating mankind through secret societies. No, these evilous figures are really allegories or aspects of the European's inherently vampiric nature and irreverence for Mother Earth, the indigenous peoples and the animals." - Andre Heath, Publisher.

October 29, 2014 - GULF OF MEXICO - The 2010 BP oil spill that resulted in 172 million gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico has, four years later, left an oily “bathtub ring” about the size of Rhode Island on the sea floor surrounding the site of the Macondo well, according to new research.

About 10 million gallons of oil has collected on the sea floor near the former site of the Deepwater Horizon rig and BP-operated Macondo well, where the oil spewed from April 20 to July 15 in 2010, according to a study by David Valentine, a University of California Santa Barbara geochemist, and co-author Christopher Reddy, a marine chemist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

Cumulative BP / Deepwater Horizon oil slick footprint (orange).

The study, published Monday in ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,’ found that the oil spill has left several splotches in the Macondo well area, some with more oil residue than the 1,200-square-mile “bathtub ring.”

Valentine said though there are no chemical signature tests given the oil has since degraded, the source of the oil is obvious.

"There's this sort of ring where you see around the Macondo well where the concentrations are elevated," Valentine said, according to AP.

He added that oil levels found inside the ring were as much as 10,000 times higher than outside the ring. A chemical ingredient of oil was found on the sea floor, from two-thirds of a mile to a mile below the water’s surface.

BP questioned the study’s findings, especially since the oil can no longer be tested given its degraded state.

A drilling platform near the Transocean Discoverer Enterprise drillship burns off gas collected at the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill
on June 25, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana. (Chris Graythen / Getty Images / AFP)

The BP oil spill spewed 172 million gallons of oil into the Gulf in 2010.

In an email to AP, spokesman Jason Ryan said, "the authors failed to identify the source of the oil, leading them to grossly overstate the amount of residual Macondo oil on the sea floor and the geographic area in which it is found."

Though such chemical analysis is impossible at this point, study authors Valentine and Reddy said other evidence point to the Deepwater Horizon disaster: the depth of the oil, the area it encompasses, and the distance from the Macondo well.

The study was praised by marine scientists Ed Overton, of Louisiana State University, and Ian MacDonald, of Florida State University, neither of whom were involved in its conclusions, according to AP.

Though the spill is more than four years old, scientists are still measuring - and debating - the total ecological impact of the BP spill. For now, Reddy said they believed their findings validated earlier research that found deep water coral was coated with oil and damaged from the spill.

The Deepwater Horizon explosion killed 11 people and polluted Gulf waters that wash onto the shores of five US states as oil gushed from the drilling rig for nearly three months before the flow was brought to a halt.
In all, prosecutors said over 4 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf, making it the largest accident of its kind in petroleum industry history. Around 16,000 miles of coastline were affected and, according to the National Park Service, over 8,000 animals died as a result.

In early September, a federal judge ruled that BP had acted with gross negligence before the spill, indicating that the corporation may have to pay billions of dollars in fines.

US District Court Judge Carl Barbier also wrote in his ruling that two other oil companies — Transocean and Halliburton — acted negligent as well, but failed to find them as responsible as BP with regards to the spill. Transocean owned the Deepwater Horizon rig, but drilling rights were leased to BP; Halliburton was in charge of the “cementing” process on the doomed drilling site.

The three companies, Barbier wrote, are "each liable under general maritime law for the blowout, explosion and oil spill," but the bulk of the blame — specifically 67 percent — will rest on BP. According to Bloomberg News, BP may next face fines as high as $18 billion — the maximum penalty under the Clean Water Act — and has already put aside $3.5 billion to cover those costs.

Despite the ruling, energy companies can count on political allies in states like Louisiana to defend their interests. For instance, in June, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal signed into law legislation that rescued dozens of oil and gas companies from a lawsuit over long-term damage done to the state’s wetlands.

Waves carry in blobs of oil as it washes ashore from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on June 26, 2010 in Orange Beach, Alabama.
(Joe Raedle / Getty Images / AFP)

The rig blew on April 20, 2010 and spewed 172 million gallons of oil into the Gulf through the summer. Scientists are still trying to figure
where all the oil went and what effects it had.

The study by David Valentine, the chief scientist on the federal damage assessment research ships, estimates that about 10 million gallons of oil coagulated on
the floor of the Gulf of Mexico around the damaged Deepwater Horizons oil rig. Valentine said the spill left other splotches containing even more oil.

New research shows that the BP oil spill left an oily "bathub ring" on the sea floor that's about the size of Rhode Island.

Experts said the law may very well thwart future claims against energy companies, including those against BP.
In a letter urging Jindal to veto the legislation, Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell wrote that the bill included “very broad and all-encompassing language” and “may have other potential serious unintended consequences."

“No one can currently quantify or identify all of the causes of action which will be swept away if this bill becomes law,” the letter warned

“In the coming years perhaps the proponents of the bill can tailor legislation more narrowly drawn which does not portend such a broad and vague attack on the abilities of the State, and most importantly, local governmental entities to protect their citizens.” - RT.

THE EUROPEAN EXO-SKELETON: Forget About Robots - Crazed Euro-American Scientists Are Already Fusing Technology With Living Matter?!

May 28, 2014 - TECHNOLOGY & THE EUROPEAN EXOSKELETON - The future has a funny way of sneaking up on you. You don’t notice it until you’re soaking in it. That was the feeling at O’Reilly’s Solid Conference last week. For the first time, the venerable tech publisher held an event dedicated the way software and hardware are coming together in devices that don’t involve a typical computer screen. The gadgetry on display was so complex and so diverse–spanning everything from smart trash cans to airborne wind turbines–that even hardcore techies marveled at how far this world has already come.

Bot & Dolly's Iris was responsible for the zero-g camera work in Gravity, which won this year's Oscar
for best cinematography. Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

At the conference, WIRED sat down with Joi Ito, the director of the MIT Media Lab and one of the event’s planners, to discuss this phenomenon of convergence, where bits from the digital realm are fusing with atoms here in the physical world (see gallery above). Experimentation is spreading, he says, and it won’t stop at gadgets. For Ito, the next great engineering platform will be living matter itself.

The proliferation of new hardware, Ito says, is driven in part by changes in the global supply chain. Over the past year, the industrial supply chain companies that serve giant mass-market hardware makers like Apple and Motorola–helping to generate iPhone and iPads and Android devices–are now starting to serve startups as well. Manufacturing and distribution are becoming ever-more automated and modularized, he says, and startups can plug into these economies of scale.

As experimentation increases, so does the willingness of venture capitalists to invest. “Hardware is harder than software. It’s still an area that isn’t the traditional low-hanging fruit of Silicon Valley,” Ito says. “But I think people are realizing there are going to be some big winners in this space. And they want to be in it.”

One company leading this transition in Silicon Valley sensibility is Google, which is bridging the digital-physical divide through both a flurry of startup acquisitions and its own projects. Chief among them is Google’s self-driving car. “Google says smartly that they didn’t design a self-driving car. They designed a driver,” Ito says. It’s a way of thinking about hardware that stresses the device as an intelligent system, not just an object. “The self-driving car is a great example of how all that hype about big data and cloud converges into stuff that touches the real world through hardware.”

At Ito’s Media Lab, infusing the rest of the world with digital intelligence has always been a part of the culture, a cornerstone of the lab’s experiments in creating better, more useful and pleasing ways for people to interact with technology. Among the materials he’s most excited about is DNA, information encoded into living form. The cost of manipulating life’s building blocks, he says, is falling at a much more rapid clip right now than Moore’s Law predicts for silicon. “If you think that diminishing cost is what drives innovation to startups and to dorm rooms, I think bioengineering is coming really fast and is going to catch up,” Ito says. “It’s neat to think about not just computational biology but computation in biology.”

As one example, Ito says he was recently talking to some students who were working with a microbe that was acting as a chemical sensor. A reaction would trigger an electrical circuit that would in turn send out a wireless signal. The completely hybrid biological-electrical device was designed not for novelty, but because each piece was the best tool for the job–the electrical because of greater efficiency at sending out the signal, the biological because of greater accuracy and lower power. Ito sees vision as a particularly promising direction for a hybrid “anti-disciplinary” approach where mechanical engineers, biologists, and computer scientists come together. Each likely has a role to play in piecing together technology-enabled sight.

He’s well aware that tinkering with the stuff of life carries great risk, perhaps even the ultimate cost-benefit: “You get the promise of immortality together with the biohacker script kiddie extinction event.” And Ito believes that the engineers driving the fusion of digital and physical can only truly succeed if they account for all the issues that emerge when the digital and physical merge, from network security to ecological impact.

At the same time, Ito believes that the makers of these new machines need to deploy their creations early and often. (“Deploy or die,” he says.) In part, that’s to get innovators thinking about how to manufacture and distribute, not just invent. But using the real world as a platform also forces designers and engineers to think about how what they make affects and alters the world. It demands an approach to design that conceives of devices not in isolation, but as parts of a system bigger than themselves.

“Most science and technology has been about trying to conquer nature and create local gain at the expense of the system,” Ito says. “Thinking about yourself as a participant in a system with responsibility and interactions, you come up with a different kind of sensibility that you get by forcing kids to think about how something is going to be deployed.” - WIRED.

EUROPEAN VAMPIRISM AND THE WAR ON MOTHER NATURE: The BP Oil Spill - OVER A MILLION Birds Died During Deepwater Horizon Disaster!

May 08, 2014 - FLORIDA, UNITED STATES - The 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon well blowout vomited more than 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and onto its shores--the largest accidental, offshore oil spill in history. It killed wildlife, tainted fisheries, and damaged coastal ecosystems from marshes in Louisiana to beaches in Florida. But due to a paucity of data, the true extent of the damage is still not yet known, especially where bird mortality is concerned. What research does exist is confidential property of the U.S. government, and will not see the light of day until the lawsuit against BP has run its course, the next phase of which begins in 2015.

A Brown Pelican.  Rebecca Field

Into this vacuum step J. Christopher Haney, Harold Geiger, and Jeffrey Short, three researchers with extensive experience in environmental monitoring and post-spill mortality assessments. In their recent study, which has been accepted for publication in Marine Ecology Progress Series, the authors estimate that up to 800,000 coastal birds died as a direct result of the Deepwater Horizon spill. That number, as large as it is, is on the conservative side, says Audubon Director of Bird Conservation for the Gulf Coast and Mississippi Flyway, Melanie Driscoll. Once further studies are conducted, says Driscoll, the number will certainly exceed one million. In comparison, a quarter of a million birds are estimated to have died as a direct result of the Exxon Valdez, a spill that was much smaller than that of Deepwater Horizon.

The study itself uses two models to estimate coastal bird mortality. The carcass sampling model attempts to answer a seemingly simple question: for every bird corpse found during clean-up efforts, how many bird bodies were missed, due to factors such as scavenging, or the bird dying at sea, or decomposition? The other model, called the exposure probability model, attempts to quantify how many birds of each species would have encountered the oil, given the size of the slick at any given time and estimated population densities. Despite these being two very different ways to estimate bird mortality, the models agreed very closely with the possible range of bird deaths: between 600,000 and 800,000 over the 95 days of the "acute phase" of the spill. Another way to think about that: 8,000 coastal birds died every day during the acute phase.

While the numbers are sobering on their own, drilling down to individual bird species reveal population-level impacts on their numbers. According to the paper, 36 percent of the entire Laughing Gull population in the northern Gulf of Mexico died within that 95-day period. Fifteen percent of Royal Terns perished, as did 12 percent of Brown Pelicans. On Queen Bess Island, Driscoll saw an entire colony of Royal Tern chicks oiled; they all subsequently died due to oil exposure.

The suffering that Driscoll observed during the actual spill foreshadowed this devastating loss of bird life, and she says she has feared that the toll could exceed a million birds. In the paper by Haney et al., says Driscoll, the researchers went to great lengths to explain how they used data from this and other spills to make their calculations. The authors described sources for overcounting and undercounting. For example, if oiled birds tend to fly toward shore, the researchers may have overestimated the number of birds that died. But sources of undercounting are far more prevalent: During the spill, searchers only collected whole carcasses, and they did not search breeding colonies until months after the initial spill. Further, the counts missed the carcasses that were either burned or skimmed away when rescue workers removed oil from the water's surface. The researchers also chose to not count live oiled birds and they deliberately excluded entire classes of birds--marsh-dwellers such as gallinules, rails, bitterns, and some herons and egrets. More than 2,000 miles of marsh were affected by the spill, representing a large number of bird deaths which are not accounted for in the analysis.

The mortality from acute oil exposure is only a fraction of the damage that Deepwater Horizon wreaked upon the Gulf. Four years after the disaster, some 200 miles of Louisiana beach is still contaminated with oil. Studies on shrimp and dolphins have shown long-term health issues with animals exposed to oil and dispersant during the Deepwater Horizon--lowered reproductive success, chronic health problems, and starvation due to loss of food sources.

The most distressing aspect of this entire situation, says Driscoll, is that, four years later, BP is putting more energy into stonewalling than restoring the Gulf. The third phase of the lawsuit against BP for its violation of the Clean Water Act will not begin until 2015--five years after the disaster. This means that most compensatory funds to help restore the Gulf have not yet materialized. Meanwhile, BP attempts to discredit studies that show harm to Gulf resources and has started refusing to fund research to understand delayed and chronic effects on birds and other wildlife, says Driscoll. While birds and other wildlife in the Gulf struggle to recover, the government and conservation communities use early restoration money to repair damage and steward the birds, doing what they can to make sure the animals get the best chance at long-term survival. - Audubon Magazine.

PLAGUES & PESTILENCES: New China H7N9 Bird Flu Cases "Signal" Potential Winter Epidemic - Dutch Scientists Create Mutant Flu Viruses To Combat New H7N9 Strain!

October 26, 2013 - CHINA - Fresh human cases in eastern China of a deadly new strain of bird flu signal the potential for "a new epidemic wave" of the disease in coming winter months, scientists said on Thursday.

The strain, known as H7N9, emerged for the first time in humans earlier this year and killed around 45 of the some 135 people it infected before appearing to peter out in China During the summer.

A woman (L) wearing a mask walks past a poster showing the prevention of H7N9 bird flu strain at Ditan
Hospital, where a child with the new strain of bird flu is undergoing treatment, in Beijing April 13, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Jason Lee/Files

But a new case in October in a 35-year-old man from China's eastern Zhejiang province shows that the virus "has re-emerged in winter 2013" and "indicates a possible risk of a larger outbreak of H7N9 this winter," according to Chinese researchers writing in the online journal Euro surveillance.

Flu experts around the world have been warning that despite the marked drop off in cases during the summer months, the threat posed by H7N9 bird flu has not passed.

Ab Osterhaus, a leading virologist based at the Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands who has been tracking the virus, told Reuters earlier this month: "We're bracing for what's going to happen next."

The first scientific analysis of probable transmission of the new flu from person to person, published in the British Medical Journal in August, gave the strongest proof yet that it can jump between people and so could potentially cause a human pandemic.And another study published in August identified several other H7 flu viruses circulating in birds that "may pose threats beyond the current outbreak".

Map of H7N9 human cases link.reuters.com/vaq93v

In a detailed analysis of the 35-year-old man's case, scientists from the Zhejiang Provincial Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said it differed from previous ones in that it was a severe case in a younger patient "with no obvious underlying diseases and no obvious recent direct contact with live poultry".

Most laboratory-confirmed cases in the past had been people over the age of 60, many of whom said they'd had recent exposure to poultry, generally at live bird markets.

The case of the 35-year-old man, plus another H7N9 infection confirmed just a day ago, suggest the virus "has apparently continued to circulate in an animal reservoir during the summer", the researchers said.

The second October case is a 67-year-old man with no underlying disease whose work included transporting and selling poultry.

The researchers said that based on China's experience in the spring, when there were 30 cases in March and 88 in April, the best approach now would be to maintain enhanced and expanded surveillance in human and animal populations to make sure any new cases of H7N9 are picked up and diagnosed swiftly.

"In particular, enhanced surveillance in poultry would be helpful if it can identify the H7N9 virus and inform early control measures before human infections occur," the Chinese scientists said.

"Hygiene campaigns and closure of live poultry markets can reduce the risk of severe cases and deaths." - Reuters.

Dutch Scientists Create Mutant Flu Viruses To Combat New H7N9 Strain.

File photo of chickens sitting inside cages in New Taipei City

Credit: Pichi Chuang/Reuters

Dutch scientists hidden away in a top-security laboratory are seeking to create mutant flu viruses, dangerous work designed to prepare the world for a lethal pandemic by beating nature to it.

The idea of engineering viral pathogens to be more deadly than they are already has generated huge controversy, amid fears that such viruses could leak out or fall into the wrong hands.

But with China braced for scores more cases of a deadly new strain of H7N9 bird flu, Ron Fouchier and Ab Osterhaus say the benefits of this gene mutation research far outweigh the risks.

The experiments, designed to explore H7N9's potential to develop drug resistance and find which genetic modifications might enhance its ability to spread, could offer the know-how to halt a lethal flu pandemic, they say.

That could be with well-timed new vaccines or other therapies tuned to the pandemic strain's genes.

"We're bracing for what's going to happen next. If H7N9 becomes easily transmissible between humans, yes, the case fatality ratio may go down a little from where it is now, but we'd still be talking about millions of people dying," says Osterhaus, the head of a highly bio-secure laboratory in the Netherlands which will lead some of the H7N9 mutation work.

"This is a critical question - what does this virus really need to become transmissible? It is of extreme importance to being able to understand what's going on."

As things stand, 45 of the 136 people known to have contracted H7N9 bird flu in China and Taiwan have died - giving a case fatality rate of around 30 percent.

Fouchier, who has already done so-called "gain of function" experiments with another strain of bird flu, H5N1, says we need to get ahead of the game with H7N9 since its pandemic risk would rise "exponentially" if it gained in nature what he aims to give it in the lab - the ability to spread easily among people.

"OUTRAGEOUS CHUTZPAH"

So far, however, their drive to find out as much as they can about the genetics of bird flu risks rarely wins these world-renowned virologists thanks. More often, it elicits accusations of putting scientific self-interest over security.

Steven Salzberg, a professor of medicine and biostatistics from John Hopkins School of Medicine, accused them of "an outrageous display of chutzpah" and says Fouchier "is deeply confused about the possible benefits of this work", which Salzberg argues are marginal at best.

File photo of a breeder covering his face as he sits behind his chickens, which according to the breeder are
not infected with the H7N9 virus, in Yuxin township. Credit: William Hong/Reuters

"The notion of 'gain of function' research on pathogens is very, very dangerous," he told Reuters.

The H7N9 outbreak, which began in February when the first cases of this flu strain previously unknown in humans emerged, flared up in April and May and dwindled over the summer months.

But news last week that a 35-year-old from China's eastern Zhejiang province is in a critical condition in hospital with the virus reawakened fears that it could come back hard as temperatures drop and the flu season returns.

So, hidden away in an un-signposted corner of the campus of the Erasmus Medical Centre in the port city of Rotterdam, a handful of top security-cleared researchers are selecting, deleting and adding genes to strains of the H7N9 virus to check what it might be capable of in a worst-case scenario.

The studies aim to genetically modify the virus to see what it needs to give it more of a deadly pandemic kick. That could mean making it more virulent, more pathogenic and, crucially, more transmissible - capable of passing easily in droplets through the air from one mammal to another.

Naturally, it's not the sort of work that can be done just anywhere.

The Erasmus team has one of Europe's most secure laboratories - a so-called Enhanced BSL3, or Bio-Safety Level 3, lab - the highest level of biosecurity for academic research and a facility in which agents can be studied that cause "serious or lethal disease" but don't ordinarily spread between people and for which treatments or preventives exist.

The highest level, BSL4, requires military guard and applies to pathogens for which there are no preventives or treatments.

SECURITY LAYERS

Fouchier, one of only six people with security clearance to enter the Rotterdam lab, says that despite the presence of mutant viruses, he feels safer there than walking in the street.

"You need special keys to get in. You go though various changes of clothes and through all sorts of interlocked rooms," he explained during a Reuters visit to the campus.

"There are personal pin codes and additional security measures to get through the next series of doors. And there are cameras all over the place, watching you all the time, 24/7."

Needless to say, media access to the laboratory itself is strictly forbidden.

File photo of doctors and nurses attending a training course for the treatment of the H7N9
virus at a hospital in Hangzhou. Credit: Chance Chan/Reuters

Fouchier spent several years shuttling back and forth across the Atlantic arguing his case for conducting and publishing similar work on H5N1 bird flu, which so alarmed the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) that it took the unprecedented step of trying to censor publication.

The NSABB had said it feared details of the work could fall into the wrong hands and be used for bioterrorism.

A year-long moratorium on such research followed while the World Health Organisation (WHO), U.S. security advisers and flu researchers sought ways to ensure the highest safety controls.

With those in place, the WHO satisfied and U.S. research funders broadly agreed, Fouchier and 22 other scientists announced in August that they planned to end the moratorium, and the Dutch team say now is the time to get going.

"The easiest thing would be to back off and say 'OK, we won't touch this any more'. But that's not the right way to behave," said Osterhaus. "As a scientist you have a responsibility towards the public. And if we can prevent a pandemic from happening, that could save millions of lives." - News Daily.

PLAGUES & PESTILENCES: 40,000 Hens To Be Killed Due To Bird Flu In New South Wales, Australia!

October 20, 2013 - AUSTRALIA - Bird flu has been confirmed in a flock of 400,000 layer hens near Young in the State's west.

File photo.

However NSW Chief Veterinary Officer Ian Roth said the flu was the H7 Avian Influenza strain, not the highly dangerous H5N1 strain that can pass to humans and has gained worldwide attention. .

The property has been quarantined and the NSW Department of Primary Industry's "First Response Team'' was working with the property owners and the egg industry, he said.

"The remaining birds on the property will now be culled in-line with national agreements.

"Control restrictions are now in place within a 10km radius of the quarantined egg farm and extensive surveillance and tracing is now underway to ensure the virus does not spread," he said.

The NSW Food Authority has confirmed that there are no food safety issues and that poultry and eggs remain safe to eat.

Mr Roth said Australia has previously had a small number of outbreaks of H7 Avian Influenza viruses which were all quickly and successfully eradicated. - Herald Sun.

PLAGUES & PESTILENCES: China Confirms New Human H7N9 Infection!

October 15, 2013 - CHINA - One new human H7N9 avian influenza case has been confirmed in east China's Zhejiang Province, local authorities said Tuesday.

It was the second such case reported in Zhejiang since late April, according to a statement from the provincial health department.

A 35-year-old man surnamed Liu tested positive for the H7N9 virus at the Zhejiang Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, according to the statement.

Liu, a company employee from Shaoxing County, was admitted to a township hospital on Oct. 8. He is in critical condition and is receiving treatment at a Shaoxing county hospital.

H7N9 bird flu cases in China reached 134 by the end of August. Of the cases, 45 patients have died, according to the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

No new cases of H7N9 infection were reported on the Chinese mainland in September, according to the commission. - China.

PLAGUES & PESTILENCES: H7N7 - New Chinese Bird Flu May Be Worse Than H7N9 Virus!

August 24, 2013 - CHINA - A virus called H7N7 has been discovered in chickens in China, according to a new study published in the journal Nature.

A man weighs a chicken in a Hong Kong poultry market on May 24, 2013. Another bird flu virus has been found in chickens in China, that appears to have been developing alongside the H7N9 strain. (Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images)

A team of Hong Kong researchers found the virus in about 25 percent of the fowl sampled, many of which also had the H7N9 virus. By testing the H7N7 virus on ferrets, the researchers found that it can be transmitted to mammals.

“If (we) let this H7N7 continue circulating in chickens, I am sure that human infection cases will occur,” study co-author Guan Yi at the University of Hong Kong told AFP. “This virus could cause more severe infection than … H7N9, based on our animal experiment.”

H7N7 appears to have developed alongside H7N9, which has killed 44 of more than 130 people infected in China.

“We think it is scary for humans,” Guan added. “Our entire human population almost has no antibodies against the H7 subtype of influenza virus. Thus, if it causes pandemic outbreak, it will kill many people.”

The scientists believe a better surveillance system is needed to monitor for dangerous viruses like H7N9 that may be emerging. “This is a very different influenza ecosystem from other countries,” Guan said, according to Nature. - TET.

PLAGUES & PESTILENCES: First Probable Person To Person Transmission Of New Bird Flu Virus in China - But H7N9 Is Not Able to Spread Efficiently Between Humans?!

August 08, 2013 - CHINA - The first report of probable person to person transmission of the new avian influenza A (H7N9) virus in Eastern China has just been published.

The findings provide the strongest evidence yet of H7N9 transmission between humans, but the authors stress that its ability to transmit itself is "limited and non-sustainable."

The first report of probable person to person transmission of the new avian influenza A (H7N9) virus in
Eastern China has just been published. The findings provide the strongest evidence yet of H7N9
transmission between humans, but the authors stress that its ability to transmit itself
is "limited and non-sustainable." (Credit: © chuugo / Fotolia)

Avian influenza A (H7N9) virus was recently identified in Eastern China. As of 30 June 2013, 133 cases have been reported, resulting in 43 deaths.

Most cases appear to have visited live poultry markets or had close contact with live poultry 7-10 days before illness onset. Currently no definite evidence indicates sustained human-to-human transmission of the H7N9 virus.

The study reports a family cluster of two patients (father and daughter) with H7N9 virus infection in Eastern China in March 2013.

The first (index) patient -- a 60 year old man -- regularly visited a live poultry market and became ill five to six days after his last exposure to poultry. He was admitted to hospital on 11 March.

When his symptoms became worse, he was transferred to the hospital's intensive care unit (ICU) on 15 March. He was transferred to another ICU on March 18 and died of multi-organ failure on 4 May.

The second patient, his healthy 32 year old daughter, had no known exposure to live poultry before becoming sick. However, she provided direct and unprotected bedside care for her father in the hospital before his admission to intensive care.

She developed symptoms six days after her last contact with her father and was admitted to hospital on 24 March. She was transferred to the ICU on 28 March and died of multi-organ failure on 24 April.

Two almost genetically identical virus strains were isolated from each patient, suggesting transmission from father to daughter.

Forty-three close contacts of both cases were interviewed by public health officials and tested for influenza virus. Of these, one (a son in law who helped care for the father) had mild illness, but all contacts tested negative for H7N9 infection.

Environmental samples from poultry cages, water at two local poultry markets, and swans from the residential area, were also tested. One strain was isolated but was genetically different to the two strains isolated from the patients.

The researchers acknowledge some study limitations, but say that the most likely explanation for this family cluster of two cases with H7N9 infection is that the virus "transmitted directly from the index patient to his daughter." But they stress that "the virus has not gained the ability to transmit itself sustained from person to person efficiently."

They believe that the most likely source of infection for the index case was the live poultry market, and conclude: "To our best knowledge, this is the first report of probable transmissibility of the novel virus person to person with detailed epidemiological, clinical, and virological data. Our findings reinforce that the novel virus possesses the potential for pandemic spread."

So does this imply that H7N9 has come one step closer towards adapting fully to humans, ask James Rudge and Richard Coker from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, based in Bangkok, in an accompanying editorial?

Probably not, they say. Limited transmission between humans "is not surprising, and does not necessarily indicate that the virus is on course to develop sustained transmission among humans."

Nevertheless, they point to several traits of H7N9 are of particular concern, and conclude that, while this study might not suggest that H7N9 is any closer to delivering the next pandemic, "it does provide a timely reminder of the need to remain extremely vigilant: the threat posed by H7N9 has by no means passed."

Dr Zhou says that the reason for carrying out this study was because there was "no definite evidence to show that the novel virus can transmit person-to-person," plus she and her co-authors wanted to find out whether the novel avian influenza virus possesses the capability to transmit person-to-person. She concludes that "the infection of the daughter is likely to have resulted from her father during unprotected exposure" and suggest that the virus possesses the ability to transmit person-to-person in this cluster. She does add however that the infection was "limited and non-sustainable as there is no outbreak following the two cases." - Science Daily.

PLAGUES & PESTILENCES: H1N1 Flu Cases Up Sharply In Venezuela - 414 New Cases In Just 1 Week; 1,138 Total!

June 17, 2013 - VENEZUELA - The number of H1N1 swine flu cases rose sharply in Venezuela during the last week of May, the health ministry said Wednesday, refusing to disclose whether any deaths have been linked to the outbreak.

 A patient is given a swine flu vaccination at the University College London Hospital on October 21, 2009. The Venezuelan ministry said there were 414 new cases of H1N1 in the week from May 26 to June 1 of this year.

Health Minister Isabel Iturria, explaining why deaths would not be reported, blamed "political or economic interests" for creating alarm over the outbreak.

The ministry said there were 414 new cases of H1N1 in the week from May 26 to June 1, pushing the total number of cases from 724 to 1,138.

The virus was detected for the first time in Venezuela in 2009.

The current outbreak has surpassed one in 2011 that resulted in 900 cases and eight deaths.

Venezuela has been fiercely polarized since Nicolas Maduro was declared the winner of a disputed election in April to replace his mentor, the late leftist leader Hugo Chavez. The centrist opposition has contested the results. - France24.

PLAGUES & PESTILENCES: China Confirms 131 H7N9 Bird Flu Cases With 39 Deaths - Federal Officials Weigh Vaccine Options!

June 12, 2013 - CHINA - A total of 131 H7N9 avian flu cases have been reported on the Chinese mainland, including 39 cases resulting in deaths, authorities said. Of the total, 78 H7N9 patients have been discharged from hospitals after receiving treatment. The other 14 patients are being treated in hospitals, reported Xinhua Sunday citing the National Health and Family Planning Commission. It said the China’s confirmed H7N9 virus cases are isolated and there has been no sign of human-to-human transmission.

The H7N9 bird flu is a form of the Influenza virus A. Detecting the presence of this virus is very difficult because it does not cause illness in poultry. It is a virulent form of the H1N1 virus and has a much higher fatality rate.  


What is H7N9?
H7N9 bird flu is a form of avian flu that is spread from infected poultry to humans. In the name given to the disease, the H7 stands for ‘haemaglutinin’ or HA. Haemaglutinin is a glycoprotein found on the surface of the influenza virus. Its main function is to cause the agglutination (clumping of particles/cells) of blood. HA has 17 different parts and they are labeled as part H1 to H17. H7 is the type of haemaglutinin found in this particular virus. The ‘N7’ stands for Viral neuraminidase, its main function is to help viral DNA enter the patients’ cells and cause infection. Like Haemaglutinin, Viral neuraminidase also has a number of parts and N9 is the type of neuraminidase found in this particular virus.

The H7N9 bird flu is a form of the Influenzavirus A. It has been found to commonly infect people who handle poultry infected with the virus. Detecting this virus is very difficult because it does not cause illness in poultry. It is a virulent form of the H1N1 virus and the CDC and WHO(World Health Organisatiom) are still looking into its origin, the way it is transmitted and a possible vaccine for the condition.

 According to the CDC and WHO the symptoms of mild avian flu are the same as having a viral fever. Symptoms include sore throat, running nose, muscle aches. Symptoms of infection by a more virulent form of the disease include severe respiratory illness, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, pneumonia, acute respiratory distress, viral pneumonia, respiratory failure, multi-organ disease, sometimes accompanied by nausea, abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting, confusion, dizziness etc.

Diagnosis of Avian Flu:
The avian flu cannot be diagnosed by clinical signs and symptoms alone, there are a few basic tests that a physician is likely to prescribe in such a case. To perform the test, a lab technician will take a swab of the throat of the person. This will then be used to culture the organism in the lab. Tests usually performed are molecular analysis and culture (growing the organism) analysis. In cases where there is a severe form of the disease, the technician might take a swab from the lower respiratory tract (a region a little lower in the throat). This again will be analyzed like a normal swab. If the Influenzavirus A is still not detected, the lab may perform a test called the viral antigen detection test. This test is used to identify if the patient’s body has produced antigens (fighting cells) against the influenza virus.

In the case of the H7N9 virus, the time of testing is crucial to accurate diagnosis. A person cannot be tested at the onset of the disease nor when he/she has fully recovered. This is because the virus is very rarely detected under such circumstances.
 
Treatment options:
The CDC and WHO has found that the H7N9 virus is sensitive to neuramidase inhibitors such as oseltamivir or zanamivir. These are drugs sold under the commercial name of Tamiflu. As a precaution doctor says that people should avoid the indiscrimate use of this drug as it could lead to  antibiotic resistance in patients.

Methods of prevention:
The influenza virus A or the Avian flu can be prevented by simple measures. Firstly, people working with poultry should take adequate protection before handling them. Protective measures such as wearing a mask and gloves are the best methods. People should also ensure that they wash their hands well before eating or touching their face or nose. Currently the CDC has not been able to pinpoint the exact mode of transmission from human-to-human, but they do suggest that people should avoid contact with patients infected with the virus.  It is also suggested that patients should be effectively quarantined during the time of the infection. All in all the H7N9 hasn’t given the authorities much to worry about till now! - Health India.

Federal Officials Weigh H7N9 Vaccine Options

Intensive federal deliberations are under way on whether to stockpile a vaccine against the H7N9 flu virus that emerged this spring in China, similar to the government's response to the H5N1 avian flu threat, health officials said today.

In the meantime, vaccine companies are getting ready to produce enough vaccine for clinical trials, which are slated to begin in August, according to an update presented before the National Vaccine Advisory Committee (NVAC), an outside group that assists the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The meeting was broadcast live on the Web.

Robin Robinson, PhD, director of the HHS' Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) told the group that over the past 4 years federal health officials have used an assessment tool to weigh the risks of novel flu viruses and consider any steps to take with vaccine and other preparedness activities.

He said the risk weighting for H7N9 virus and the 2009 H1N1 virus bear some resemblances, with an uncanny similarity in timing. "It's been 4 years and 1 week since I was here to talk about possible pandemic vaccine efforts [for the 2009 pandemic H1N1 virus]," Robinson said.

When the variant H3N2 virus popped up at state and county fairs in the United States last summer, federal officials used the same risk-assessment tool and decided to go only as far as making enough vaccine for clinical trials, he said. However, if the H7N9 virus evolves to support sustained human-to-human transmission, the government would consider a large-scale vaccine campaign.

In stockpiling discussions, federal officials are weighing factors such as whom to vaccinate, what vaccine platforms to include, production capacity, timing, and cost, Robinson said. A decision on stockpiling could come this summer, he added.

Vaccine development details
So far nine different H7N9 seed strains have been developed for vaccine production, and most of them were made with reverse genetics. However, Robinson said some classic reassortants are starting to emerge.

Reminiscent of the 2009 H1N1 vaccine, health officials are seeing disappointing yields of antigen with the vaccine seeds used with traditional egg-based production methods, Robinson said. Lower-than-expected antigen yield was one factor that hampered the H1N1 vaccine in its early stages of production. However, he said one change from 2009 is that scientists can recognize that issue up front. Officials saw antigen yield increase in 2009 as production of the pandemic vaccine hit its stride.

A major difference between 2009 and now is that the H7N9 trials will include two new platforms—cell based and recombinant. "We have more tools in our toolbox," he said.

In October 2012 a 3-year review of existing influenza vaccines called out gaps in protection, especially in older people. Its researchers said the newest vaccine technology targets the same part of the flu virus—the hemagglutinin (HA) head—as traditional vaccines and aren't likely to yield substantial efficacy improvements.

The group, from the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, publisher of CIDRAP News concluded that new approaches are needed, such as vaccines that target the HA stalk, and that major national and global efforts are required to overcome significant challenges in producing a game-changing flu vaccine.

Progress on the recombinant vaccines is running a little ahead of the traditional vaccines, with better antigen yields so far, Robinson said, predicting that the first vaccine lots will be released in July, with the first clinical trials to launch in August. "That may sound familiar, because that's when we started testing the H1N1 vaccine," Robinson said.

BARDA has been supporting an H7N1 vaccine candidate made by GlaxoSmithKline, and trials of that vaccine will launch in early July, he said. Given that the vaccine is a "cousin" of the H7N9 vaccine, those trials are likely to produce interesting findings shortly in advance of the H7N9 results. The H7N1 virus is one of a handful of flu strains considered to have pandemic potential.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has already started work on the potency assay reagents that will be used to assess the candidate H7N9 vaccines, Robinson said. He added that at least two alternate potency assays are being assessed. A federal countermeasure assessment and a White House review of the 2009 H1N1 vaccine campaign both suggested that new vaccine potency assays might be one way to shorten pandemic vaccine production timelines.

H7N9 challenges ahead
Looking ahead to the H7N9 trials, federal officials and researchers will have some daunting challenges. "Historically, H7 vaccines haven't provided a very rosy picture for us," Robinson said. "We have our work cut out for us."

Earlier trials of inactivated subunit H7 vaccines with and without adjuvant haven't shown a strong immune response, he said. "That is alarming."

Robinson said live-attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV) trials with H7 strains have shown modest immunity, for what can actually be measured. More recently, studies have hinted that priming with LAIV H7 vaccine followed by vaccination with inactivated vaccine may produce a robust response, he told the group.

Last month, CIDRAP Director Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH, and colleagues said in a Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) commentary that if the H7N9 evolves into a pandemic strain, the world is unlikely to make enough of the vaccine in time to dampen the impact. Besides the limited effectiveness of H7 vaccines tested so far, the global public health community remains unprepared, they wrote, despite added vaccination production capacity.

The group projected that at the 90-microgram (mcg) dose used for the H5N1 vaccine, the global capacity for H7N9 vaccine would be 757 million doses, less than 15% of the global need.

Robinson said researchers don't know what dosage is needed, but given the lack of population immunity to H7 strains, the amount of antigen in a dose of unadjuvanted vaccine might require as much as 90 mcg, as with the H5N1 version. He predicted that two doses of H7N9 vaccine would be needed. With that estimate, it would take 18 months to provide enough vaccine for everyone, with the cost likely to be prohibitive, he said.

As federal officials weigh different H7N9 vaccine scenarios, one decision they have made is that its production should not delay seasonal flu vaccine manufacturing, he said.

The combination of factors involves may increase the possibility that a dose-sparing adjuvanted vaccine would be needed in an H7N9 immunization campaign, Robinson said. Unlike in many other parts of the world, adjuvants haven't been used in US flu vaccines, and their inclusion in a pandemic vaccine would create challenges in pitching it to a public that is unfamiliar with the vaccine boosters.

NVAC members asked federal health officials about H7N9 vaccine efforts under way in China. During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, China was the first country to bring a vaccine to market. Robinson said several different companies in China are developing H7N9 vaccines. "They are probably at the same point we are," he said. - CIDRAP.

PLAGUES & PESTILENCES: Dutch Authorities Cull 11,000 Chickens After Avian Influenza Outbreak In Amsterdam, Netherlands!

June 03, 2013 - NETHERLANDS - Health authorities will cull 11,000 chickens at a farm in the Netherlands after an outbreak of a mild form of avian influenza, the Dutch Economic Affairs Ministry said on Saturday.

The chickens were believed to have the low pathogenic H7 strain, the ministry said in a statement. They would be culled as a precaution because the strain can mutate into a form that is fatal for poultry.

Authorities imposed a one-kilometer safety perimeter around the farm banning transports of poultry, eggs and other farm products. Testing would also be carried at 11 other farms in the area, it said.

In recent years several cases of the low pathogenic bird flu strain have been reported in the Netherlands.

The most devastating outbreak of H7N7 avian flu in the country was in 2003 and led to the culling of 30 million birds, about a third of the nation's poultry flock. - Scientific America.

PLAGUES & PESTILENCES: Shanghai Man Dies From H7N9 Avian Influenza - Becomes 38th Fatality!

June 03, 2013 - CHINA - A man diagnosed with avian influenza H7N9 approximately two months ago, has succumbed to the new viral disease, say the Shanghai Municipal Health and Family Planning Commission, the Indo-Asian News Service reports Saturday.

Under a high magnification, this negatively-stained transmission electron micrograph (TEM) captured some of the ultrastructural details exhibited by the new influenza A (H7N9) virus.
Image/CDC

The 59-year-old man becomes the 38th death reported due to the bird flu virus.

To date, there are a total of 132 laboratory-confirmed cases, including 38 deaths.

Influenza A(H7N9) is one of a subgroup of influenza viruses that normally circulate among birds. Until recently, this virus had not been seen in people. However, human infections have now been detected in China.

Thus far, most patients with this infection have had severe pneumonia. Symptoms include fever, cough and shortness of breath.

At a special presentation on the response to the recent emergence of human infection with avian influenza A(H7N9) virus in China was held during the 66th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Dr Margaret Chan, the WHO Director-General said:

“Chinese officials have promptly traced, monitored, and tested thousands of patient contacts, including hundreds of health care workers. At present, human-to-human transmission of the virus is negligible. However, influenza viruses constantly reinvent themselves. No one can predict the future course of this outbreak.”

- Global Dispatch.

PLAGUES & PESTILENCES: CONTAGION - Two Die After H7N9 Bird Flu Virus Develops Drug Resistance, Already Showing The Ability To Mutate To Avoid Treatment With Tamiflu!

May 28, 2013 - CHINA - Scientists have found the first cases of the new bird flu virus proving resistant to treatment with Tamiflu or similar drugs. The virus has so far killed 36 people in China and been confirmed in 95 others.

The analysis of the course of the H7N9 bird flu virus and use of antivirals in 14 patients, reported in the Lancet medical journal, found that three severely ill people did not respond to the group of medicines that are the standard weapon against threatened flu pandemics. Two died and the third still needed specialist equipment to oxygenate their blood at the time the research paper was submitted.

The authors, from Shanghai and Hong Kong, said that in these cases genetic testing showed a mutation. In one patient, it seemed to have occurred after the infection took hold, probably as a result of the treatment.

They said: "The apparent ease with which antiviral resistance emerges in (H7N9) viruses is concerning: it needs to be closely monitored and considered in future pandemic response plans."

However, they said that in most cases, treatment with oseltamivir (Tamiflu) "even when started 48 hours or more after disease onset, was associated with falling viral load in most patients … Therefore, early treatment of suspected or confirmed cases is strongly encouraged".

The same message was given by the World Health Organisation, which said scientists at its collaborating centre in Beijing had found "discrepancies" in samples of virus tested in laboratory conditions but not linked to clinical cases. But the study, as yet unpublished, did not differentiate between resistance and possible impurities.

It believed neuraminidase inhibitors – the group of treatments to which Tamiflu belongs – could still be effective. "Based on this, our treatment recommendations have not changed: the potential severity of H7N9-associated illness warrants recommending that all confirmed cases, probable cases, and H7N9 cases under investigation, receive antiviral treatment with a neuraminidase inhibitor drug as early as possible." - Guardian.