[lit-ideas] Re: Protect the patents!
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 16:34:00 -0800
Where are they getting their information I wonder? I've heard no
predictions at all except that the virus is now 50% of where it needs to be
in order to be person to person transmissible.
This last sentence makes no biological or 'scientific' sense at all.
(Are you ascribing purpose to a virus?) Could you explain to us what it
means, or even what it might possibly mean?
Can you explain what the consequences would be if a genetic change in
the HN51 strain of avian flu were to make it readily transmissible from
human to human? It is already transmissible, but not robustly, from
birds and from the environment (bird fesces, etc.) to humans. The number
of human cases, in proportion to the number of infected birds, is
minuscule; the number of human fatalities among these is even more
minusculer, as Einstein would say.
(I grant that WHO has said it is 'only a matter of time' before
bird-human transmission happens, but so what?) I'm with Phil Enns on
this one.
Robert Paul
Reed College
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
