| ||||||
|
Arts & Entertainment
Books Comics  Health & BodyMedia Mothers Who Think News People Politics2000 Technology - Free Software Project Travel & Food  Columnists
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - Also Today For a full list of today's Salon Health & Body stories, go to the
Health & Body home page. - - - - - - - - - - - - Search Salon - - - - - - - - - - - - Recently in Salon Health & Body Column Books Urge: Naked World Urge Complete archives for Health & Body - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
|
The philosophy of the flu | page 1, 2
It's hard to know. When the 1918 flu was killing everyone, all of a sudden there was a flu epidemic that was killing pigs everywhere in the Midwest. It's not clear whether people gave the flu to pigs or pigs gave it to people. In the 1930s, when they looked at people who survived the 1918 flu they all seemed to have antibodies with the flu that had affected pigs. The thought was, whatever that flu was in 1918, it at least superficially resembled the flu that affected pigs. We can get flu from pigs -- wasn't the Hong Kong flu from birds? Flu: The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused it. By Gina Kolata
That's why they had the horrible episode in Hong Kong a few years ago, they thought maybe something like the 1918 flu was coming back because young people were dying of the flu and it turned out to be transmitted from chickens, so they killed all the chickens, ducks and geese in Hong Kong. In general we can't get it directly from birds. They get the flu all the time and don't get sick. They have an enzyme that we don't have. So in order to get a bird flu something has to change in it. Pigs can get flu from birds and pigs can get flu from people. They can be sort of a mixing bowl. So the two flu viruses can mix and match -- and have some bird flu characteristics and some human flu characteristics, which will allow it go get into people's lungs. Actually there are all sorts of animals who can get infected with flu -- that's why we can never wipe flu out from the world. Is the flu virus a real species or is it a linguistic thing, that is, a certain virus that gives you a lung disease is called a 'flu'? It's a linguistic thing. They started calling it a flu before they actually learned there was such a thing as a virus. Smallpox is caused by a virus, right? Yes. So in a way, can you call smallpox a flu? No. You couldn't. It's like saying because salmonella poisoning is caused by bacteria and pneumonia can be caused by bacteria so they both can be called salmonella. It's different viruses causing different things. Flu can be transferred through the air, right? Right. That's why it's so scary. With AIDS you can say, 'There are ways of not getting AIDS.' But if something is being transferred by the air, it's very hard to avoid it. How long is flu's airborne life span? Not very long. Less than an hour. Viruses are strange creations. They have to live inside a cell. Does Michael Jackson have the right idea with his gauze mask? They don't work. Back in 1918 many cities passed laws that you couldn't go out without gauze over your mouth. It was useless. The virus passed right through. So we need space helmets? We need to really barricade ourselves in our houses like survivalists or something. There's no way to predict when a new virus will break out, is there? That's really frightening. First of all, I think AIDS was really humbling for the 20th century. Around 1980, scientists were in this phase where they said, 'Oh we're conquering everything.' And here's a new virus breaking out. With flu there's always new viruses breaking out. If it's an old one then everybody already has antibodies to it, so the virus has to keep changing to find a new population to infect. There are so many animals and so many people that can have flu viruses mutating away in them, it's inevitable that every year there are new flu viruses. The medical establishment is always worried about new influenzas. Do they know enough? Are they prepared enough to really get going on this? They're concerned about how long it takes to make vaccines. They're also concerned that in 1976 when Ford started to do swine flu vaccine, scientists got a reputation for crying wolf. Scientists now worry if they say, 'This flu could be deadly. You really should get vaccinated,' people will just say, 'Yeah. You told us this before.' So there's so much cynicism. There's a whole anti-vaccine movement going on even with vaccines for children that most people think are crucial. Were the scientists cautious when they were digging up the Spanish flu corpses? Sort of. The woman, Kristy Duncan, who went to that island off Norway, was. She was very worried about starting another epidemic. Everyone wore space suits. They had a little tent over the grave site. Then of course it turned out that the ground the miners were buried in wasn't even frozen, so they were totally decayed. I remember reading about that in the newspaper at the time and thinking, Why do you want to preserve a virus? To know what it looks like. This could help forecast when a bad flu is going to come. If they can answer why this flu killed so many people in 1918, then if they then see a virus somewhere with these same characteristics they can say this is the one that we have to worry about. In your book you mention these places where they have bits of people's bodies laying around for years and years. It's just amazing. I went into this warehouse in Washington, D.C., called the Library of Congress of the Dead, and it was just row after row of boxes. And in the boxes were pieces of people's brains and hearts. They died of ordinary things. And they died of strange illness. And along with each person's piece of tissue were slides of their cells and their medical records. It's just amazing to think that it's there. There is also one of those places in England. It's not as well organized. It's in the basement of this old hospital. Everything is written out by hand -- this spidery handwriting. Some things are mislabeled. But they actually have a repository, too. It sounds like there could be a little jar of bubonic plague sitting around and a cleaning woman opens it up ... I think because the things are mainly preserved in formaldehyde that anything in them would be dead. So let's talk preventive stuff about the flu. Do you use pay phones? Ha! I do. I have a cousin who always carried around Lysol and sprayed the phones. I always thought that was crazy. I guess you could get infected from a pay phone. Can you wipe flu germs off of a pay phone? You probably could. You can overdo your paranoia. You gotta have a life. If your number's up, your number's up. [Pause.] Can viruses die? Die? They're not eternal, right? They're parasitic and live off the host? Yes. If they haven't spread on to somebody else and the host dies, the virus will die too. Then viruses are alive, right? Some people would say they are. Some people would say they aren't. Because you normally think if something is alive it can live on its own and reproduce itself. But viruses have to go into a cell and take over the cell's machinery to reproduce itself. What drives them? What drives them? What drives them to stay alive? Is God in a virus? You're getting beyond where I think I can answer. I don't even have a hypothesis. [Pause.] I always have a hypothesis, but not on this one. Mankind didn't come from a virus, did we? I don't think so. We couldn't. Because a virus has to live in a cell. Yes. Moving from person to person and animal to animal. You'll be fighting it off, but you would spread it to somebody else and then it would blindly reproduce in the next person while they fight it off and it spread to somebody else. This is basically "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." [She laughs.] Yes. I should have thought of that for my book.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - Search Salon | |||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||
