Aetiology

Background The verified human cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza in Vietnam may represent only a selection of the most severely ill patients. The study objective was to analyze the association between flulike illness, defined as cough and fever, and exposure to sick or dead poultry.

Methods A population-based study was performed from April 1 to June 30, 2004, in FilaBavi, a rural Vietnamese demographic surveillance site with confirmed outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza among poultry. We included 45 478 randomly selected (cluster sampling) inhabitants. Household representatives were asked screening questions about exposure to poultry and flulike illness during the preceding months; individuals with a history of disease and/or exposure were interviewed in person.

Results A total of 8149 individuals (17.9%) reported flulike illness, 38 373 persons (84.4%) lived in households keeping poultry, and 11 755 (25.9%) resided in households reporting sick or dead poultry. A dose-response relationship between poultry exposure and flulike illness was noted: poultry in the household (odds ratio, 1.04; 95% confidence interval, 0.96-1.12), sick or dead poultry in the household but with no direct contact (odds ratio, 1.14; 95% confidence interval, 1.06-1.23), and direct contact with sick poultry (odds ratio, 1.73; 95% confidence interval, 1.58-1.89). The flulike illness attributed to direct contact with sick or dead poultry was estimated to be 650 to 750 cases.

Conclusions Our epidemiological data are consistent with transmission of mild, highly pathogenic avian influenza to humans and suggest that transmission could be more common than anticipated, though close contact seems required. Further microbiological studies are needed to validate these findings.

"I would call this the smoking gun," said Dr. Gregory Poland, a Mayo Clinic flu specialist. "All of us have been concerned and have guessed that the data we have so far has been the tip of the iceberg."

The human cases counted so far likely have been the most severely ill patients treated at major hospitals, Poland said.

"In the really rural areas, we know that this had to be occurring" too, and the study suggests that the prevalence "is pretty high," he said. "The data lines up biologically the way we would have expected it to."

Two young brothers, ages 4 and 5, who have tested positive for the dreaded H5N1 avian virus but shown no symptoms of the disease were being closely watched at Kecioren Hospital here Tuesday. Doctors are unsure whether they are for the first time seeing human bird flu in its earliest stages or if they are discovering that infection with the H5N1 virus does not always lead to illness.

In any case, the highly unusual cluster of five cases detected in Turkey's capital over the last three days -- all traceable to contact with sick birds -- is challenging some of the doctors' assumptions about bird flu and giving them new insights into how it spreads and causes disease. Since none of the five has died, it is raising the possibility that human bird flu is not as deadly as currently thought and that many mild cases in Asian countries may have gone unreported.

Diamond Pet Food has discovered aflatoxin in a product manufactured at our facility in Gaston, South Carolina. Aflatoxin is a naturally occurring toxic chemical by-product from the growth of the fungus Aspergillus flavus,, on corn and other crops.

Out of an abundance of caution, we have notified our distributors and recommended they hold the sale of all Diamond Pet Food products formulated with corn that were produced out of our Gaston facility (see complete list below). Please note that products manufactured at our facilities in Meta, Missouri and Lathrop, California are not affected. The Gaston facility date codes are unique from other Diamond facility codes in that either the eleventh or twelfth character in the date code will be a capital "G" (in reference to Gaston). The range of date codes being reviewed are "Best By 01-March-07" through Best By " 11-June-07". Diamond's quantitative analysis records substantiate that Diamond's corn shipments were definitively clear of aflatoxin after December 10. As such, "Best By 11-June-07" date codes or later are not affected by this notice.

States serviced by our Gaston facility include Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky (eastern), Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, Vermont, and Virginia.

We are rapidly analyzing retained samples of all products produced in Gaston so we can isolate specific lot numbers impacted and provide this information to our distributors, retailers and customers as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, if your pet is showing any symptoms of illness, including sluggishness or lethargy combined with a reluctance to eat, yellowish tint to the eyes and/or gums, and severe or bloody diarrhea, please consult your veterinarian immediately.

Doctors and AIDS activists in South Africa have filed a joint lawsuit against the country's health minister and controversial vitamin supplier Matthias Rath as concerns mount over the government's lack of leadership amidst the country's worsening AIDS crisis.

The South African Medical Association (SAMA) and the prominent activist group Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which together filed the lawsuit, say they aim to end the climate of what the TAC calls "politically-supported denialism" afflicting the country's fight against AIDS.

A key element of the lawsuit is the allegation that in at least two townships, Rath is running illegal medical trials for his multivitamins, which he markets to AIDS sufferers as an alternative to 'poisonous' antiretroviral drugs.

A spokesman for Rath declined to speak to Nature Medicine about the case, saying he is convinced the journal is "funded to the hilt with drug money."

They don't agree with everything I say -- in particular, I suspect my anti-religious stance might give a few of our administrators' ulcers -- but they're also committed to the principles of academic freedom.

Organisms like the sea slug Elysia chlorotica. This animal not only looks like a leaf, but it also acts like one, making energy from the sun. Its secret? When it eats algae, it extracts the chloroplasts, the tiny entities that plants and algae use to manufacture energy from sunlight, and shunts them into special cells beneath its skin. The chloroplasts continue to function; the slug thus becomes able to live on a diet composed only of sunbeams.

Still more fabulous is the bacterium Brocadia anammoxidans. It blithely makes a substance that to most organisms is a lethal poison - namely, hydrazine. That's rocket fuel.

And then there's the wasp Cotesia congregata. She injects her eggs into the bodies of caterpillars. As she does so, she also injects a virus that disables the caterpillar's immune system and prevents it from attacking the eggs. When the eggs hatch, the larvae eat the caterpillar alive.

It's hard not to have an insatiable interest in organisms like these, to be enthralled by the strangeness, the complexity, the breathtaking variety of nature.

It's that small facts add up to big pictures. For although Mother Nature's infinite variety seems incomprehensible at first, it is not. The forces of nature are not random; often, they are strongly predictable.

For example, if you were to discover a new species and you told me that the male is much bigger than the female, I would tell you what the mating system is likely to be: males fight each other for access to females. Or if you discover that the male's testicles make up a large part of his weight, I can tell you that the females in his species consort with several males at a time.

Suppose you find that a particular bacterium lives exclusively in the gullets of leeches and helps them digest blood. Then I can tell you how that bacterium's genome is likely to differ from those of its free-living cousins; among other changes, the genome will be smaller, and it will have lost sets of genes that are helpful for living free but useless for living inside another being.

When I was in school, I learned none of this. Biology was a subject that seemed as exciting as a clump of cotton wool. It was a dreary exercise in the memorization and regurgitation of apparently unconnected facts. Only later did I learn about evolution and how it transforms biology from that mass of cotton wool into a magnificent tapestry, a tapestry we can contemplate and begin to understand.

Some people want to think of humans as the product of a special creation, separate from other living things. I am not among them; I am glad it is not so. I am proud to be part of the riot of nature, to know that the same forces that produced me also produced bees, giant ferns and microbes that live at the bottom of the sea.

For me, the knowledge that we evolved is a source of solace and hope. I find it a relief that plagues and cancers and wasp larvae that eat caterpillars alive are the result of the impartial - and comprehensible - forces of evolution rather than the caprices of a deity.

More than that, I find that in viewing ourselves as one species out of hundreds of millions, we become more remarkable, not less so. No other animal that I have heard of can live so peaceably in such close quarters with so many individuals that are unrelated. No other animal routinely bothers to help the sick and the dying, or tries to save those hurt in an earthquake or flood.

And for me, there is something deeply spiritual about that idea, of connectedness to all of the planet on some level. I don't find that evolution challenges my spirit; rather, learning more about how nature interconnects allows me to find more footing with my own life and walk with God.

"The analogy which you attempt to establish between the contrivances of human art, and the various existences of the Universe, is inadmissible. We attribute these effects to human intelligence, because we know beforehand that human intelligence is capable of producing them. Take away this knowledge, and the grounds of our reasoning will be destroyed. Our entire ignorance, therefore, of the Divine Nature leaves this analogy defective in its most essential point of comparison.

You assert that the construction of the animal machine, the fitness of certain animals to certain situations, the connexion between the organs of perception and that which is perceived; the relation between every thing which exists, and that which tends to preserve it in its existence, imply design. It is manifest that if the eye could not see, nor the stomach digest, the human frame could not preserve its present mode of existence. It is equally certain, however, that the elements of its composition, if they did not exist in one form, must exist in another; and that the combinations which they would form, must so long as they endured, derive support for their peculiar mode of being from their fitness to the circumstances of their situation."

These textbooks seem also to have been intended to provide solace for the existentially anxious. All of them offered in one form or another the reassurance that “Geography eaches us about the earth which was made to be our home.” Earth by itself “could not be the abode of man,” advised one. “Therefore, two indispensable agents are provided—the sun and the atmosphere.” The entire vast history of the planet was summed up as the “gradual formation by which it was made ready for the reception of mankind.” The lay of the land had been thoughtfully arranged for our benefit: “As the torrid regions of the earth require the greatest amount of rain, there are the loftiest mountains, which act as huge condensers of the clouds.” Because the breezes that blew down mountainsides cooled the inhabitants below, the highest were located in the hottest pars of the world “for the same reason that you put a piece of ice into a pitcher of water in summer, rather than in winter.”

Another book explained that all the plants and animals that lived and died for eons did so precisely because humans, during their industrial era, would need the coal. The author observed that “the wisdom of this Plan is further recognized in the fact that the coal is found, mainly, in those parts of the earth that are best fitted for human habitation—in the United States, Great Britain, Western Europe, British America, and China.”

Design arguments…reverse such practical explanations, replacing natural causality with supernatural predestination. In doing so, useful answers that open up further questions are replaced by answers that are emotionally satisfying but intellectual and practical dead ends. After all, once you know that mountains exist because they were meant to exist, what is left to do but sit in your armchair and mediation on the wisdom of their design?

The details have changed, but the fundamental habits of thought at issue have not. Do we want children to learn what is currently known and, more important, what remains to be discovered, about the physics of planetary motion? Or rather should they learn that “As the earth is round, only half of it can be lighted at once. In order that both sides may be lighted, the Creator has caused the earth to rotate”?

Respect religious beliefs, but don't teach them as science
Proponents of intelligent design are working in many states to legally incorporate ID into the science curricula of public schools. On Tuesday, however, U.S. District Judge John Jones ruled that ID is not science and cannot be taught in Dover, Pa., public-school science classes. The Iowa Academy of Science agrees with this decision.

The Dover trial made it very clear that the arguments of ID are not scientific, and the basic message of ID is the same as young-earth creationism: Evolution is wrong, and a literal interpretation of Genesis explains everything we see in our world. The argument of ID that there is an "intelligent designer" behind the universe may be a good theological topic, but it has no place in science classrooms.

***

The Iowa Academy of Science and the science community, in general, respects religious belief and has no intention of diminishing religion in society. Central to the academy's mission, however, is to educate Iowa's citizenry about science. Science hasn't all the answers to questions about life on earth, but evoking a supernatural explanation, as ID advocates, will not advance our understanding of our physical world.

ID proponents press school districts to provide "equal time" and to "teach the controversy." Even on the campuses of Iowa's universities, discussions are being held on whether or how to teach ID.

Americans place a high value on fairness, and providing equal time for ID seems only fair, right? The Iowa Academy of Science has high regard and respect for the value placed on fairness; however, it is not that simple. ID proponents would have science teachers recognize a deity "behind the universe." If so, to be fair (and constitutional), teachers would have to include discussions about the many different deities revered by human societies. Our government cannot give preference to any one religion, including Christianity.

What many people do not understand is that within the science community, there is no controversy about evolution. The controversy is among the general public.

Just wait until Pat Robertson gets a load of this.

If you thought the election and the removal of that inflamed boil on democracy that was the Dover school board had doomed Dover to an eternity of perdition, filled with pain and suffering and the lamentations of the damned echoing over a Muzak-like soundtrack of Britney, Clay and other soulless pap, you ain't seen nothing yet.

You should take a few minutes - well, an hour or so - to read federal Judge John E. Jones III's ruling in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover.

If the election convinced Robertson that Dover will fall into the hands of Satan, he will most certainly interpret the judge's ruling as a sign that Armageddon is truly upon us.

It was telling that, moments after Jones' ruling landed, Dover was beset upon by a plague of locusts, poisonous toads rained from the sky and some obsequious jerk from Fox News arrived in town to interview residents about their role in the coming apocalypse.

OK, none of that happened, except for the Fox News thing.

Dover is once again driving the national SUV down the highway to hell by, as Robertson has famously said, turning its back on God. And now the judge is providing the map.

Although proponents of the IDM (Intelligent Design movement) occasionally suggest that the designer could be a space alien or a time-traveling cell biologist, no serious alternative to God as the designer has been proposed by members of the IDM, including Defendant's expert witnesses.

A "hypothetical reasonable observer," adult or child, who is "aware of the history and context of the community and forum" is also presumed to know that ID is a form of creationism...The evidence at trial demonstrates that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism. What is likely the strongest evidence supporting the finding of ID's creationist nature is the history and historical pedigree of the book to which students in Dover's ninth grade biology class are referred, Pandas. Pandas is published by an organization called FTE, as noted, whose articles of incorporation and filings with the Internal Revenue Service describe it as a religious, Christian organization. Pandas was written by Dean Kenyon and Percival Davis, both acknowledged creationists, and Nancy Pearcey, a Young Earth Creationist, contributed to the work.

As Plaintiffs meticulously and effectively presented to the Court, Pandas went through many drafts, several of which were completed prior to and some after the Supreme Court's decision in Edwards, which held that the Constitution forbids teaching creationism as science. By comparing the pre and post Edwards drafts of Pandas, three astonishing points emerge: (1) the definition for creation science in early drafts is identical to the definition of ID; (2) cognates of the word creation, which appeared approximately 150 times were deliberately and systematically replaced with the phrase ID; (3) the changes occurred shortly after the Supreme Court held that creation science is religious and cannot be taught in public school science classes in Edwards.

The much-awaited decision in the Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District is now available.

The 139 page document finds for the plaintiffs.

Judge Jones finds that “intelligent design” is not science. The DASD ID policy violates both purpose and effect prongs of the Lemon test, and also violates the Pennsylvania constitution.

One study found that some of the lamins turn up in the wrong place—too tightly linked to the membranes of the nuclear envelope to participate properly in key stages of cell replication.

The researchers said this would disrupt DNA replication, and be a likely factor in the rapid march of cells toward premature “senescence,” a cellular version of aging. Whether similar missteps and miscues by nuclear lamins are part of normal human aging is the question that draws researchers onward, said Goldman. But the findings are consistent with a widespread belief among biologists that a key cause of ordinary aging is damage to DNA and mistakes in gene replication, two interrelated problems.

Another study found that the most common type of mutant lamin re-organizes regions of chromosomes that are key in controlling gene expression. These portions of chromosomes, known as heterochromatic regions, are kept inactive for various reasons; for example, one of the two female X chromosomes is deactivated in this fashion in order to avoid having them duplicate their work.

One of the hallmarks of the X chromosome heterochromatic region is that it is linked to molecules known as methylated histones. But the researchers found that in a girl with the progeria syndrome, the quantities of these molecules and of an enzyme required to form them were abnormally low.

Bono is a co-founder of the DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa) organization, which fights poverty and HIV in the developing world. From that organization was spawned the ONE Campaign to Make Poverty History.

"It has been a great year for global health to get more visibility," Bill Gates said Friday. "The more people know about it, the more they want to act."

The magazine said that while sudden disasters grab the headlines, other tragedies unfold daily.

"And who is proving most effective in figuring out how to eradicate those calamities? In different ways, it is Bill and Melinda Gates, co-founders of the world's wealthiest charitable foundation, and Bono, the Irish rocker who has made debt reduction sexy," Time's managing editor Jim Kelly writes.

In January, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation committed $750 million to improving access to child immunizations, accelerating introduction of new vaccines and strengthening vaccine delivery systems.

The foundation focuses on education, global health, improving public libraries and supporting at-risk families, according to its Web site.