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Helen Pearson
Rising death toll flags unexplained character of killer virus.
The current outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus in Angola is raising difficult questions about this enigmatic pathogen and its origins.
As of 5 April, Angolan health officials had reported 181 cases of Marburg haemorrhagic fever, of which 156 have been fatal. The outbreak of the rare but lethal virus, which causes fever and circulatory collapse, is the worst ever recorded.
Health workers' primary concerns are treating those infected and blocking the further spread of the virus. The World Health Organization and other medical groups have set up five mobile surveillance teams in Uíge province, where the outbreak originated, to identify rumours of cases. "Everyone is focused on the cases in front of them," says WHO spokesman Dick Thompson, who is working in Angola.
Researchers interested in the disease are focusing on some unusual features of the latest outbreak. For one thing, the probability of dying from Marburg disease once you've caught it, currently more than 85%, is higher than in previous events. In the first recorded incidence of the disease, which stemmed from infected monkeys shipped from Uganda to Europe in 1967, some 23% of those infected were killed.
The high death toll parallels that of the only other large outbreak of the disease, in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1998 and 2000. There, more than 80% of infected patients died, according to analyses carried out by Daniel Bausch, of the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, and his colleagues.
It is not clear why the death rate should differ from one outbreak to the next. Some think the various events involved strains of different ferocity. Marburg's cousin Ebola, for example, is known to have strains with widely varying fatality rates.
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An outbreak of bird flu on three large poultry farms in North Korea has been tentatively identified as the H7 strain of the virus - not the H5N1 strain that has been killing people and poultry across east Asia for more than a year. But UN officials have revealed to New Scientist that the evidence for this is only indirect.
South Korea reported in March that its secretive northern neighbour had suffered bird flu outbreaks near the capital, Pyongyang, since early February 2005. Concern immediately flared that it was H5N1, which has killed at least 49 people across East Asia to date.
North Korea is extremely poor, with persistent food shortages and much of the population prone to disease. It is also slow to accept visits or help from outsiders, a combination that could allow an H5N1 outbreak to run out of control, possibly triggering a human pandemic.
North Korean authorities finally confirmed they had bird flu outbreaks last week, saying more than 200,000 birds had been destroyed on three large farms near Pyongyang. Hans Wagner of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) announced on Tuesday - after a week-long visit to the country - that the virus responsible is the H7 strain of avian influenza.
But Juan Lubroth, head of infectious diseases at the FAO, told New Scientist that the evidence is indirect. “The North Koreans made a vaccine using virus from the sick chickens, and vaccinated chickens in the region around the outbreak,” he says. “Those chickens show a high level of antibodies to H7.”
So it appears the outbreak was H7 flu. But this is a mystery, as an outbreak of H7 has never been recorded in east Asia before. “The North Koreans say they have destroyed all the sick chickens, and the outbreak is now over,” says Lubroth. “That’s good for the Koreans. But we’d like a sample of tissue from the infected birds so we can isolate the virus.”
A genetic sequence might help trace the strain’s origins, and whether it has mixed with other Asian strains. H7 flu caused outbreaks in poultry in 2004 in the US, Canada, Pakistan and the Netherlands, where it also infected 245 Dutch chicken workers and their contacts. Most had no symptoms, but one vet died.
Meanwhile, 11 new human cases of H5N1 have been confirmed in Vietnam in the past month, bringing the total number since the current outbreak began in December 2004 to 33, of whom 15 have so far died. A second case in Cambodia, who died, was also confirmed last week.
Klaus Stõhr, head of flu at the World Health Organization in Geneva, is calling for countries to set aside 5% of what they normally spend on flu vaccination for research into vaccines against a flu pandemic.
But only rich countries spend much on normal flu vaccination, and only about a quarter of the world’s vaccine was used outside the US, Canada, Western Europe, Japan and Australia in 2003, according to the WHO.
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By Paul Meller BRUSSELS- Despite public abhorrence in Europe of all things genetically modified, European officials say they will let the United States take the lead in untangling how unapproved corn entered Europe over the last four years.
Syngenta, the Swiss biotechnology company that produced the corn, said late in March that it had inadvertently mixed up two types of its genetically modified corn.
One type, known as Bt-11, has been legal for years in both the United States and Europe. But a similar strain, Bt-10, has never been tested or approved. The main difference between the two strains is that the unapproved one contains a gene that confers resistance to the antibiotic ampicillin. Environmentalists fear that introducing it into the food chain could increase resistance to antibiotics.
The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, said Friday that it thought about 1,000 metric tons (1,102 tons) of an unauthorized strain of corn entered union countries in the forms of animal feed, corn flour and corn oil. Syngenta discovered its mistake in December, but informed the Europeans only last month, after a report in the journal Nature.
A spokesman for the European commissioner for health and consumer affairs, Philip Tod, said on Monday: "The commission has written a letter of protest to Syngenta, also asking for their cooperation in tracking down the Bt-10 corn in Europe, but beyond that we are not planning any other measures. It's a matter for the U.S. authorities."
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Young, 27, evaded authorities for more than 6 years
By GINA BARTON
After evading authorities for more than six years, Peter D. Young was caught because he tried to shoplift a bunch of music CDs from the coffee shop - in front of a uniformed Cooley, police said.
It was the end of a long road for Young, who authorities say once trekked through Wisconsin, South Dakota and Iowa in a Geo Metro freeing some 8,000 mink.
"They did downright poorly with freedom," FBI Supervisory Special Agent Michael Johnson said of the mink. "They're domesticated animals, so when they're released into the wild, they get preyed upon by other animals, run over by cars, or starve to death."
Young did slightly better with his own liberty, until his fateful stop at Starbucks last month. Cooley, an officer with the San Jose police department, saw Young grab the CDs and hide them in his jacket, according to Gina Tepoorten, the department's public information officer. Cooley asked Young to hold up his coat, and the booty fell out, she said.
Cooley asked Young for identification, and Young presented a Virginia driver's license with someone else's name and picture on it, Tepoorten said. During a pat-down search, the officer found a stolen credit card. He also found a handcuff key taped inside Young's belt, where it would be easily accessible to someone whose hands were cuffed behind his back, she said.
At the police station, Cooley ran Young's fingerprints through a national database and realized Young was wanted on federal charges of engaging in animal enterprise terrorism and unlawfully interfering with interstate commerce in the multi-state mink releases, which occurred in October 1997.
Young's co-defendant, Justin Clayton Samuel, was arrested in Hasselt, Belgium, in 1999. He reached a deal with prosecutors, pleaded guilty to two federal misdemeanors and was sentenced to two years in prison.
If convicted of all six federal charges against him, Young faces a maximum penalty of 82 years in prison.
Both Young and Samuel were living in Washington state when they hatched their plan to put fur farms out of business, according to court records. They were armed with a target list of fur farms, as well as bolt cutters and maps. The list was part of a publication called "The Final Nail," which was posted on the Web site of the Animal Liberation Front.
"The two participated in raids on fur farms at night under the cover of darkness," the indictment says.
Animals were released from five commercial mink ranches, including three in Wisconsin.
Among the hardest hit was the Smieja Fur Farm in Independence, Wis. There, about 800 of the coveted blue iris mink - valued at $200,000 - were set free and presumably met their deaths. The mink were breeding stock, with females producing an average litter of five each spring. Without these parents of future mink generations, the farm was forced to shut down, according to the indictment.
Authorities aren't sure why Young ended up in California. He did not provide them with an address and was less than cooperative when questioned, Tepoorten said.
According to a Web site set up by his supporters in the animal rights community, Young is in isolation in the Santa Clara County Jail because he has refused to take a tuberculosis test, which contains animal products. He also is having trouble getting enough to eat, since jail officials won't give him food that meets his vegan diet, according to the site. The Santa Clara Department of Corrections public information officer did not respond to questions.
In California, Young faces charges of burglary, possession of stolen property and presenting a false I.D. to a police officer, Tepoorten said. Once those charges are resolved, Young, 27, will be returned to Wisconsin - one of the leading mink farming states in the nation.
Because of that prevalence, Wisconsin fur ranches continue to be targeted by animal rights' groups. The sad part, said the FBI's Johnson, is that their actions usually have a detrimental effect on the critters they're trying to save.
"There's no wild mink population anywhere in the state of Wisconsin that we're aware of," he said.
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Roxanne Khamsi
Dairy herds with bacterial gene could cream mastitis.
Each year, the dairy industry loses billions of dollars to mastitis, an infection of cows' milk glands. Now researchers have succeeded in genetically engineering cows to resist this disease.
The bacterial infection causes inflammation and swelling, and a loss in milk production. Combined with the cost of treating the disease, this adds up to a loss of about $2 billion a year in the United States, and $200 million in Britain.
Technological advances that make it possible to collect more milk also make mastitis harder to contain. "We've increased their yield with the milking machine, which spreads infections from cow to cow," explains Andrew Biggs an expert on mastitis at the Vale Veterinary Centre in Tiverton, Devon, UK.
One bacterium that commonly causes mastitis, Staphylococcus aureus, is notoriously resistant to treatment: only 15% of infections are cleared up by antibiotics. The medications often fail to fully penetrate the mammary glands, leaving the surviving bacteria to wreak havoc yet again.
To solve this problem, a team of US researchers turned to genetic engineering. They introduced a gene from the related bacterium S. simulans into the DNA of Jersey cows. This allows them to produce a protein, normally created by S. simulans, that kills S. aureus.
This is the first time that biologists have created transgenic cows that resist disease. Previous attempts to improve animals' disease-fighting abilities have used chickens and sheep
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Elisabeth Malkin
CAPULALPAM DE MENDEZ, MEXICO -- This ancient Zapotec Indian town of whitewashed adobe houses and tiled roofs perched on a verdant slope of the western Sierra Madre could not be farther from the U.S. laboratories where scientists create strains of genetically altered corn.
This is the birthplace of maize, where people took thousands of years to domesticate its wild ancestor, where pre-Hispanic myths describe it as a gift from the gods and where cooks prepare it in dozens of ways to be served at every meal.
So the discovery of genetically modified corn in the tiny plots there set off a national furor over what many see as an assault by U.S. agribusiness on the crop that is at the core of Mexico's identity.
"For us, maize is in everything: tamales, tacos, tortillas, pozole," said Miguel Ramirez, a local teacher and activist. "For us, it's sacred."
Then, radiating distrust of government assurances after a decade of free trade that has all but depopulated the Mexican countryside, he asked a familiar question: "What is the government doing to make us self-sufficient?"
The answer was a biosecurity law passed by Mexico's congress in February, a step that has divided Mexico's scientists. The issue also has put Washington on alert, making it wary of any threat to the 5.5 million tons of corn that U.S. farmers export to Mexico each year, more than to any other country except Japan.
After several years of study, a panel of international experts found that the risks to health, the environment and biodiversity from genetically modified corn were so far very limited. But after a public forum with local groups in the state of Oaxaca, the panel recommended restrictions to imports anyway, giving special weight to social and cultural arguments about protecting corn.
The panel recommended that Mexico reduce corn imports, clearly label transgenic corn and mill any genetically modified corn as soon as it enters the country to prevent local farmers from planting it.
In the end, the Mexican government set aside the milling recommendation as too expensive but required provisions for labeling that remain unclear. Overall imports of U.S. corn, mostly for animal feed, have stayed the same.
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In 2004, approximately 3.57 billion gallons of ethanol were used as a gas additive in the United States, according to the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA). During the February State of the Union address, President George Bush urged Congress to pass an energy bill that would pump up the amount to 5 billion gallons by 2012. UC Berkeley geoengineering professor Tad W. Patzek thinks that's a very bad idea.
For two years, Patzek has analyzed the environmental ramifications of ethanol, a renewable fuel that many believe could significantly reduce our dependence on petroleum-based fossil fuels. According to Patzek though, ethanol may do more harm than good.
"In terms of renewable fuels, ethanol is the worst solution," Patzek says. "It has the highest energy cost with the least benefit."
Ethanol is produced by fermenting renewable crops like corn or sugarcane. It may sound green, Patzek says, but that's because many scientists are not looking at the whole picture. According to his research, more fossil energy is used to produce ethanol than the energy contained within it.
Patzek's ethanol critique began during a freshman seminar he taught in which he and his students calculated the energy balance of the biofuel. Taking into account the energy required to grow the corn and convert it into ethanol, they determined that burning the biofuel as a gasoline additive actually results in a net energy loss of 65 percent. Later, Patzek says he realized the loss is much more than that even.
"Limiting yourself to the energy balance, and within that balance, just the fossil fuel used, is just scraping the surface of the problem," he says. "Corn is not 'free energy.'"
Recently, Patzek published a fifty-page study on the subject in the journal Critical Reviews in Plant Science. This time, he factored in the myriad energy inputs required by industrial agriculture, from the amount of fuel used to produce fertilizers and corn seeds to the transportation and wastewater disposal costs. All told, he believes that the cumulative energy consumed in corn farming and ethanol production is six times greater than what the end product provides your car engine in terms of power.
Patzek is also concerned about the sustainability of industrial farming in developing nations where surgarcane and trees are grown as feedstock for ethanol and other biofuels. Using United Nations data, he examined the production cycles of plantations hundreds of billions of tons of raw material.
"One farm for the local village probably makes sense," he says. "But if you have a 100,000 acre plantation exporting biomass on contract to Europe , that's a completely different story. From one square meter of land, you can get roughly one watt of energy. The price you pay is that in Brazil alone you annually damage a jungle the size of Greece ."
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