Pestilance - 21st century black plague ready for release

[TonyGosling]

Are we being 'softened up' with this cover story? Google up 'Miriam Rothschild' and check out her uncanny fascination with fleas.

Scientists discover 21st century black plague that spreads from rats to humans

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 11:16 AM on 24th November 2008

A new plague which jumps from rats to humans has been discovered by scientists.

Fears are growing that increasing numbers of brown rats - the most common kind in Europe - are carrying a strain of bacteria that can cause serious illness in humans from heart disease to infection of the spleen and nervous system.

The new strain of bacteria called Bartonella rochalimae is spread between rats by fleas, Taiwanese researchers have said.

Black Death: A brown rat, common in the UK, has been found carrying a new strain of bacteria called Bartonella rochalimae, which is deadly to humans

It was first discovered in an American woman with an enlarged spleen who had recently travelled to Peru..........

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1088887/Scientists-discover- 21st-century-black-plague-spreads-rats-humans.html

[Newspeak International]

Have you not seen the latest fictional output by the BBC called 'Survivors' about a "European flu virus","which could wipe out 90%" of us?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00ftbxh/Survivors_Episode_1/

It can even be downloaded.

Enjoy

[Newspeak International]

Terrorists could strike Britain by infecting country with bird flu
Terrorists could strike Britain by infecting the country with bird flu or Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a leading group of security experts has warned.

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:15AM GMT 27 Nov 2008

A commission led by Lord Ashdown, the former Liberal Democrat leader, identified 27 countries where terror organisations could become a threat to the UK.

The report by the Institute of Public Policy Research warns that one of the biggest emerging threats comes from terrorists turning to biological warfare.

The assessment comes from the IPPR's Commission on National Security for the 21st century which is chaired by Lord Ashdown and Lord Robertson, the former Secretary General of NATO, and includes Lord Guthrie, the former Chief of the Defence Staff and Sir David Omand, the former security and intelligence coordinator in the Cabinet Office.

It says the danger from pandemic diseases such as SARS and Avian Flu is growing and that existing arrangements to respond to serious incidents are inadequate which means "a serious disease outbreak or bio-terrorism incident in the next 18 months could tip the global economy from serious recession into a global depression."

The commission warns that the ingredients for sarin gas and mustard gas are easily available, that radioactive materials are in wide use in hospitals and industry and that there are insufficient checks on who is buying biological agents.

"This in turn could allow a terrorist to buy genes for use in the engineering of an existing and dangerous pathogen into a new more virulent strain," the report says.

It says that al-Qaeda remains the "most significant terrorist group of the current era" but "lone individuals with relevant experience can now be more dangerous than before."

"The biggest danger," says the report, "may come from state weakness and the possibility that terrorists might gain access to state laboratories and facilities that are insufficiently secure."

It also warns that competition between the US and China over natural resources or in outer space could spark the next global conflict.

The commission says there are double the number of weak states compared to strong ones and all of the top 20 failed or failing states are currently experiencing violent conflict or political violence.

It has identified what it calls a group of critical 'swing states' and an "arc of instability" stretching from the coast of west Africa, right across to the east coast of the continent and up through the Persian Gulf region and into central Asia.

That includes Iraq and Afghanistan along with Pakistan, which is particularly dangerous because of its nuclear arsenal, and Nigeria and Sudan, which are particularly important because of their oil reserves.

Other "pressure points" include Haiti, Burma, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.

The commission calls on NATO and the European Union to increase help for the African Union, the regional security body that is "likely to be tested the most in the next five to ten years."

But Lord Robertson and Lord Ashdown, said bio-security challenges should be treated "every bit as seriously as other, more traditional threats to security."

Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society and a member of the commission, added: 'Scientific advance has brought huge steps forward for humanity but knowledge can be used for bad purposes as well as good.

"Acts of bio-terrorism carried out not only by organised groups but by individuals with expertise and access to a laboratory, are a serious 21st century threat."














http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/352757 5/Terrorists-could-strike-Britain-by-infecting-country-with-bird-flu.h tml

[TonyGosling]

THE PLAGUE IS BACK: THE BIOWEAPON OF CHOICE
We need a vaccine for the plague, which has frightening potential if it falls into the wrong hands
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/the-plagu e-is-back-the-bioweapon-of-choice-a7505996.html

Lydia Zuraw Wednesday 11 January 2017 18:51
The plague is best known for wiping out as much as a third of Europe’s population during the Black Death pandemic of the 14th century, but it’s not entirely a thing of the past. It’s enough of a present-day threat – either as a potential bioterrorism weapon or because some strains are now antibiotic resistant – that scientists are trying to develop a vaccine. Among them are Dr Ashok Chopra and a team of researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, who recently published a study of the three newest candidates for a plague vaccine in the journal Nature.

“So far, it looks very promising, at least in the two animal models we have tested,” said Chopra, a professor of microbiology and immunology who began studying the bacteria that causes the plague, Yersinia pestis, around 2002.

smallpox.jpg
Residents of the Rhondda Valley queuing in 1962 for their smallpox vaccinations, after the Welsh area was declared to be an infected area (Getty)
He began his work following the anthrax attacks of 2001, when letters containing anthrax were mailed to media outlets and congressional offices. Congress required the departments of Health & Human Services and Agriculture to regulate certain biological agents and toxins that could pose a severe threat to public health.


The bacteria responsible for the plague made the top section of the list – Tier 1, the microbes most likely to be used as for bioterrorism agents. It’s listed alongside anthrax, Ebola, smallpox and foot-and-mouth disease.


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But 2001 wasn’t the first time the plague was considered a potential bioweapon, said Dr Paul Mead, a medical epidemiologist with the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Japan may have spread plague-infected fleas in certain parts of China during the Second World War, and the US and the Soviet Union considered spreading the plague bacteria as an aerosol during the Cold War.

There are three types of plague infection – bubonic, septicemic and pneumonic – and all are caused by the Yersinia pestis bacteria. Left untreated, the bubonic form has a 40 per cent to 70 per cent mortality rate. Pneumonic and septicaemic plague are virtually always fatal.

ebola.jpg
A Doctors Without Borders (MSF) health worker in protective clothing carries a child suspected of having Ebola in the treatment centre in Paynesville, Liberia (Getty)
In the pre-antibiotic era (1900-1941), the mortality among those infected with plague in the US ranged from 66 per cent to 93 per cent. But antibiotics like streptomycin and gentamicin are used to treat all three strains now, so that mortality has been reduced to 11 per cent.

According to the World Health Organisation, there were 783 cases of the plague reported worldwide in 2013, including 126 deaths. It affects people in rural areas in central and southern Africa, central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, the northeastern part of South America and parts of the southwestern US.

The three most heavily affected countries are Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Peru. According to the CDC, the US sees an average of seven human plague cases each year. In 2015, there were 16 cases, including two teenagers who visited Yosemite National Park in California. Four of the 16 cases were fatal. As of early November, only four cases had been reported and all patients recovered, according to the CDC.

Vaccines for the plague exist, but they have some serious flaws. One made with dead bacteria is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration but no longer manufactured. It protected against only the bubonic plague, not the more dangerous pneumonic plague.


Another vaccine is used in endemic regions such as China and the former Soviet Union, but it’s not approved by the FDA because of its high likelihood to cause severe side effects such as fever, malaise and headaches.

anthrax.jpg
A brain specimen shows haemorrhagic meningitis caused by inhaling anthrax (Getty)
The vaccines Chopra reported on in Nature protect against the pneumonic plague and don’t cause side effects. The researchers deleted three genes in each of three candidate strains of plague in order to weaken – but not kill – the bacteria.

The strains could no longer cause disease, but they generated a robust immune response in the animals tested. The team gave two doses of each vaccine to mice and then challenged the animals’ immunity with highly virulent plague strains.

The mice were protected up to four months later. Two of the mutant strains were also successfully tested in rats. Chopra also has a different type of plague vaccine in the works which uses the bacteria’s antigens. In tests in non-human primates, it was shown to be highly protective. “Everybody’s immune system is different, so some people could be protected and some may not be,” Chopra said. “Our goal is to do parallel studies so that we have in our pipeline several vaccine candidates.”