Flu product contained live bird flu virus

[querzl]

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090227/Bird_Flu_090227/20090227?hub=Health
The Canadian Press
TORONTO -- The company that released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed Friday that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses.

And an official of the World Health Organization's European operation said the body is closely monitoring the investigation into the events that took place at Baxter International's research facility in Orth-Donau, Austria.

"At this juncture we are confident in saying that public health and occupational risk is minimal at present," medical officer Roberta Andraghetti said from Copenhagen, Denmark. ...

The contaminated product, a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses and unlabelled H5N1 viruses, was supplied to an Austrian research company. The Austrian firm, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then sent portions of it to sub-contractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany.

On Friday, the company's director of global bioscience communications confirmed what scientists have suspected. "It was live," Christopher Bona said in an email.

The contaminated product, which Baxter calls "experimental virus material," was made at the Orth-Donau research facility. Baxter makes its flu vaccine -- including a human H5N1 vaccine for which a licence is expected shortly -- at a facility in the Czech Republic.

People familiar with biosecurity rules are dismayed by evidence that human H3N2 and avian H5N1 viruses somehow co-mingled in the Orth-Donau facility. That is a dangerous practice that should not be allowed to happen, a number of experts insisted.

Accidental release of a mixture of live H5N1 and H3N2 viruses could have resulted in dire consequences.

While H5N1 doesn't easily infect people, H3N2 viruses do. If someone exposed to a mixture of the two had been simultaneously infected with both strains, he or she could have served as an incubator for a hybrid virus able to transmit easily to and among people. That mixing process, called reassortment, is one of two ways pandemic viruses are created. There is no suggestion that happened because of this accident, however.

"We have no evidence of any reassortment, that any reassortment may have occurred," said Andraghetti. "And we have no evidence of any increased transmissibility of the viruses that were involved in the experiment with the ferrets in the Czech Republic."

Baxter hasn't shed much light -- at least not publicly -- on how the accident happened. Earlier this week Bona called the mistake the result of a combination of "just the process itself, (and) technical and human error in this procedure."

[querzl]

Biochemists murdered
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/bio-chemists_murdered_149.html

Two French biochemical students, Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez, were murdered by Israeli Mossad-British intelligence assassination teams on June 29, 2008. Both Bonomo and Ferez were studying at the prestigious London Imperial College researching the origins of bird flu and the link to the alleged vaccines.

The murders were first revealed by France's Directorate for Internal Security, not by Britain's Scotland Yard, making it likely that the students were French intelligence officers. London police arrested Daniel Sonnex, 23, and Nigel Edward Farmer in the killings.

The two researchers had discovered that the alleged bird flu vaccine, H-7, which was designed to neutralize and stop the H5N1 avian flu virus, had been spliced using DNA to actually create a vaccine and an illness producing virus at the same time. The French students had also discovered that the bird flu vaccine, i.e. a virus, had links to U.S., British and Israeli laboratories associated with the noted Mossad agent, Dr. Philip M. Zackerie.

Israeli microbiologist Zackerie, known as "Dr. Zack," worked for the U.S. bio-weapons lab at Ft. Detrick, Md., where he was photographed handling the strain of anthrax used in the post 9-11 attack according to published reports. He was a consultant at the FBI linked company Gilead Sciences Inc. of Boulder, Colo. Gilead Sciences has been linked to the 9-11 anthrax strain and to the bird flu vaccine.

[Jenny Lake]

Just in time for Purim?