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Aristocrat to be exhumed in bird flu fight
By Martin Beckford
Last Updated: 4:02pm GMT 28/02/2007
The body of an English aristocrat who died almost 90 years ago is to be exhumed in the hope that it could help the fight against bird flu.
Sir Mark Sykes, 6th baronet and owner of historic Sledmere House in Yorkshire, was killed by the Spanish flu virus in 1919.
He had been working on the Versailles Peace Conference and was with his wife in a Paris hotel when he died before his body ceremoniously returned to Britain.
Sir Mark was buried in a lead-lined coffin because the disease was so virulent, killing an estimated 50 million people worldwide.
Now scientists, who have long been looking for a sample of the virus, hope the preservative qualities of the metal coffin may mean samples of his DNA can still be taken.
They believe analysis of Sir Mark’s genetic material could uncover new information about the H1N1 virus which killed him, and help develop drugs to fight modern forms of the disease such as bird flu (H5N1).
Professor John Oxford, the Professor of Virology at St Bartholomew’s and the Royal London Hospital who is leading the project, said: “At this point it looks quite encouraging.
“I think the next thing to do now is to decide to open up the grave and see what samples we can take.
“If we can get samples, that would be a wonderful opportunity for my team and for science in general.
“We can get answers to very important questions. This is not just history – at the moment we are on the potential verge of the first great outbreak of influenza of the 21st century.
“We need answers to questions to help us prepare for this first outbreak and I think Sir Mark can help there.”
In order to dig up Sir Mark’s body from the church in the Sledmere estate, the researchers had to get permission from all of his living relatives as well as relatives of his wife Lady Edith Violet Sykes, who was buried with him.
The families agreed to the exhumation in the interests of science, as did a special court hearing in York.
Prof Oxford said there were “a few hurdles” to cross with consent still required from the Health and Safety Executive and the Home Office.
He explained that although there are survivors of the 1919 outbreak, including his own parents, vital information would be contained in a preserved corpse.
Prof Oxford added: “From a victim who has died at the time we can actually get a virus imprint, a genetic footprint.
“From living people all we can do is analyse their immune response. It is much more interesting scientifically to go back to someone who has died.”
Sir Mark’s grandson, the writer Christopher Simon Sykes, said: “Professor Oxford and his group are doing this research and looking for any chance of getting DNA samples of Spanish flu.
“It just so happened that because Sir Mark was buried in a lead coffin that there’s a faint chance that they may be able to extract his DNA.
“He died in Paris and because Spanish flu was so virulent they buried him in a lead coffin. He was well known to have died of the Spanish flu and the scientists knew about it.
“We are all agreed that it is a very good thing, that it should go ahead. It is rather fascinating, that maybe even in his state as a corpse, he might be helping the world in some way.”
At a hearing of York Consistory Court in January, Peter Collier QC granted Prof Oxford’s request to exhume Sir Mark and Lady Edith in the name of research into bird flu.
The court heard that the exhumations should be allowed if there was a chance they would lead to advances in the treatment of dangerous diseases.
Although the contents of Lady Edith’s coffin will not be disturbed, permission was needed to move it to reach that of her husband.
Born in 1879, Sir Mark served in the Second Boer War and travelled widely before becoming a Conservative politician.
During the First World War he became an advisor to the Government on the Middle East, and was in Paris for the peace conference when he succumbed to Spanish flu, aged just 39.
Intro: We have a prepandemic vaccine. It will be one component of the Strategic National Stockpile. It’s based on a virus from 2004 and research has shown that it’s effective for 45% of study subjects instead of the previously announced 54%. All well and good, assuming the next pandemic is the H5N1 variety from 2004. Otherwise, it’s efficacy may be much lower.
CIDRAP News, 2/27/07: A US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel today recommended that the agency approve the nation’s first H5N1 influenza vaccine, despite new evidence that the vaccine is less protective than reported in a clinical trial last year.
The panel of health advisors, convened to weigh the risks and benefits of the “prepandemic” vaccine made by Sanofi Pasteur, voted today to call the vaccine safe and effective, according to an Associated Press (AP) report. The FDA is not bound by the advisory panel recommendations but usually follows them.
The vaccine is based on an H5N1 virus isolated from a Vietnamese patient in 2004. Two companies, Sanofi and Chiron Corp., have been producing clade 1 H5N1 vaccines for the national stockpile under US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) contracts worth more than $200 million.
At least 3 million courses of the vaccine are already in the national stockpile. The government’s most recent pandemic planning update, released in November 2006, said up to 5 million more courses could be added in 2007 if vaccine seed stock supply and production yield are adequate. The stockpile goal is 20 million courses.
Sanofi, in a report submitted to the FDA panel, revealed that two 90-microgram (mcg) doses, administered 28 days apart, generated a protective immune response in 45% of patients. That level is less than the 54% rate reported almost a year ago in the New England Journal of Medicine. The higher rate was based on interim findings, the AP reported yesterday. The researchers used a neutralizing antibody titer of 1:40, a fourfold or more increase in antibody titer, to define adequate immune response.
The clinical trial, led by John J. Treanor, MD, was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and conducted at NIAID centers at the University of Rochester in New York, the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, and Harbor–University of California, Los Angeles, Medical Center in Los Angeles.
During discussion yesterday, panel member Monica Farley, MD, an infectious disease specialist at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, said she was struggling to balance the urgency for an H5N1 vaccine with “how low to set the bar on immunogenicity,” according to a Canadian Press report.
The two-dose course used in the study is 12 times the standard (15-mcg) dose used in the seasonal flu vaccine and lags behind its 75% to 90% protection rate. However, the vaccine is still better than nothing in the event of a pandemic, Norman Baylor, director of the FDA’s vaccine office, told the panel, according the AP report yesterday.
In its final analysis presented to the FDA panel, Sanofi echoed interim findings that there were almost no serious side effects, even at the highest dosages. The company said no clinically significant adverse reactions were identified after a two-dose, 7-month controlled follow-up study in adults aged 18 to 64.
“The benefit of having a licensed vaccine against a potential pandemic influenza virus strain must be weighed against the risk of having no vaccine at the time of an inevitable pandemic,” Baylor said, as quoted by the AP today.
Last November, the World Health Organization (WHO) cautioned governments against rushing to stockpile prepandemic flu vaccines, because too many scientific questions about them remained. The WHO said vaccines that seemed to work well against one H5N1 clade didn’t work well against others. Also, the agency said no one knew what level of measured immune response indicated an adequate level of protection.
However, on Feb 16 the WHO issued a statement saying that a number of new vaccines against various strains of H5N1 look promising.
When HHS issued its most recent pandemic preparedness update, it acknowledged that a prepandemic vaccine would provide only partial protection against new viral strains. “It is, for now, the best vaccine defense we have, and so we are stockpiling it,” the HHS said in the update.
The HHS has said that it is moving forward with the development of a clade 2 H5N1 vaccine based on viruses that circulated in birds in China and Indonesia in 2003-04 and spread to the Middle East, Europe, and Africa in 2005 and 2006. Also, the HHS has supported the development of cell-based vaccine production methods that would streamline and modernize vaccine production and is exploring new adjuvants that would stretch the vaccine supply.
Canada’s House of Commons on Tuesday voted against a government motion to extend two controversial anti-terrorism law provisions.
The motion, seeking to extend the security measures for three years after it expires Thursday, was defeated by a vote of 159 to 124. Most opposition Liberal, NDP and Bloc Quebecois MPs voted against the motion.
The measures were introduced by the previous Liberal government as part of its response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.
One provision allows for investigative hearings of material witnesses; the other gives police the power to detain people suspected of planning to carry out a terrorist attack for 72 hours.
Critics have said the measures go too far and infringe on civil liberties. The opposition Liberals said while they were an understandable reaction to fears about terrorism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, they are now an unnecessary infringement on civil liberties.
A vote against the two provisions would be the second time in a week that elements of Canada’s anti-terror legislation have been eliminated.
Last Friday, the Supreme Court dismissed a law that allowed foreign suspects to be detained indefinitely without trial on the basis of secret evidence, ruling it is against the Charter of Freedom.
Dubai: The death toll from the attack Monday on French expatriates in Saudi Arabia rose after a teenager who was in critical condition succumbed to his wounds Tuesday, Saudi and French official said. The young man was the fourth victim in one of the worst attacks on Westerners in Saudi Arabia since a security crackdown began there three years ago.
Sri Lanka: The U.S., Italian and German ambassadors to Sri Lanka were wounded when their helicopters came under fire Tuesday from ethnic Tamil rebels who said they mistook them for a military target.
Ambassador Robert Blake of the United States and his counterparts, Pio Mariani of Italy and Jürgen Weerth of Germany, had just landed in the Batticaloa district when several mortars exploded near their aircraft, said a Sri Lankan government minister, Mahinda Samarasinghe, who was traveling with the diplomats.
Hospital officials in Batticaloa treated Mariani and Weerth for shrapnel wounds.
Blake’s arm was grazed either by shrapnel or a stone, the military said, but he was not taken to the hospital.
Seven Sri Lankan security personnel also were wounded, he said.
Intro: You thought that tainted peanut butter is only a U.S. problem, didn’t you? Well, according to a report from ProMEDmail, it’s not as simple as all that. The “sticky” situation has become a global problem.
Tainted peanut butter that caused salmonella in 41 of the 50 USA states
also was sold in more than 60 other countries on 3 other continents and
islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific, the manufacturer says.
It was sold in Iraq, Iceland, India, American Virgin Islands, British
Virgin Islands, Netherlands Antilles, South Korea, Singapore, Brazil,
Belize, Africa, Europe, and South America.
Stephanie Childs, a spokeswoman for the manufacturer, ConAgra Foods Inc,
said on Mon 26 Feb 2007, that word of the problem with the tainted peanut
butter has gone out everywhere peanut butter is sold under the Peter Pan
and Great Value label: If the top on the jar has a number starting with
“2111,” do not eat it. “This is a full recall, including all the product,”
Childs said.
Source: ProMEDmail, 2/27/07
During the weekend, China announced a recall of the peanut butter. The
official Xinhua news agency said 3 batches (totaling 742 cases) of the 2
brands were imported between Sep 2006 and Jan 2007. The agency said at
least 156 cases already had been sold in Beijing, and even though the lids
had the suspect code, no one had reported being sickened by the peanut butter.
Intro: A jittery stock market and coyotes on runways will be occupying the news today. On top of that, NYPD has other concerns, namely an Iran-inspired terrorist attack aimed at the Big Apple:
Newsweek, 3/5/07: Increasing tensions between Washington and Tehran have revived New York Police Department concerns that Iranian agents may already have targeted the city for terror attacks. Such attacks could be aimed at bridges and tunnels, Jewish organizations and Wall Street, NYPD briefers told security execs last fall, according to a person with access to the briefing materials who asked for anonymity because of the sensitive subject matter.
NYPD officials have worried about possible Iranian-sponsored attacks since a series of incidents involving officials of the Iranian Mission to the United Nations. In November 2003, Ahmad Safari and Alireaza Safi, described as Iranian Mission “security” personnel, were detained by transit cops when they were seen videotaping subway tracks from Queens to Manhattan at 1:10 in the morning. The men later left New York. “We’re concerned that Iranian agents were engaged in reconnaissance that might be used in an attack against New York City at some future date,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly told NEWSWEEK. A spokesman for the Iranian Mission in New York said he was aware of the allegations but had no immediate comment.
On Feb. 28, 1993, a gun battle erupted near Waco, Texas, when Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents tried to serve warrants on the Branch Davidians; four agents and six Davidians were killed as a 51-day standoff began.
Wikipedia: On February 28, 1993, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) raided the Branch Davidian ranch at Mount Carmel, a property located nine miles east-northeast of Waco, Texas. The initial raid resulted in the deaths of four agents and six Davidians. The subsequent 51-day siege by the FBI ended on April 19 when fire completely consumed the complex, killing 79 people, including 25 children and Davidian leader David Koresh, that has come to be known as the Waco Siege.
Timothy McVeigh cited the Waco Siege as a primary motivation for the Oklahoma City bombing and was known to be a fan of both the Linda Thompson and Ron Cole videos. In March 1993, McVeigh drove from Arizona to Waco in order to observe firsthand the federal siege. Along with other protesters, he was photographed by the F.B.I
NY Times, 2/27/07: International prosecutors on Tuesday designated their first suspects in atrocities in the Sudanese region of Darfur, selecting a government minister and a militia commander to bring to trial.Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, said he had presented close to 100 pages of evidence and asked the judges to issue summonses for the two men, Ahmad Harun and Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman.
Mr. Harun, currently Sudan’s deputy minister for humanitarian affairs, was a senior government official in charge of the military and police and intelligence forces in Darfur as civilians were killed, raped and chased from their homes in the region, the prosecutors said.
His “unlimited” budget, the prosecutors said, allowed him to arm and finance Mr. Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, the militia leader who led fighters in a brutal campaign of violence against civilians. “We have focused on some of the most serious incidents,” Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said.
The announcement came after 20 months of criminal investigation into Darfur’s enormous bloodshed and humanitarian disaster. Human rights activists described the two suspects as powerful but not among Sudan’s top leaders.
At a news conference in The Hague, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo declined to say whether the most important figures in Sudan’s political or military hierarchy would be held accountable for the mass killing, looting, rape and general devastation in Darfur, which has uprooted more than two and a half million people, according to the United Nations.
The prosecution is believed to be investigating crimes by the government, the militias aligned with the government and the rebel forces they oppose.
Court officials said the prosecutor favored a strategy of focusing on specific events to which he can link individuals, rather than pursuing broad, ambitious indictments. He may also be following the path of other war crimes tribunals, building a base of evidence with lesser cases before moving up the chain of command. But the arrival of any Sudanese suspects at the court is far from assured.
In Khartoum, the Sudanese minister of justice immediately said the nation did not recognize the court’s jurisdiction, did not intend to hand over anyone and would try any cases itself. Sudan has told Mr. Moreno-Ocampo that it has already arrested 14 people for human rights violations, including Mr. Rahman. Even so, human rights groups said most of those arrested in Sudan have been low-level fighters.
The prosecutors’ decision, and the reaction from Khartoum, raised the basic difficulty the court faces: how to investigate, let alone put on trial, officials from sitting governments.
The International Criminal Court, embraced by 104 countries but independent from the United Nations, has a broad mandate to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity. But it has no police to enforce its summonses or arrest warrants, leaving it dependent on the very governments it may be investigating, as in the case of Sudan.
Such issues have confronted United Nations war crimes tribunals for a decade, with prosecutors for Uganda’s genocide and the wars in the Balkans still begging for the arrests of important suspects.
For the first Darfur case — the court is handling cases in three other African nations — the prosecution has focused on violence in four villages and towns, starting in the summer of 2003.
In April of that year, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said, rebels attacked Al Fasher airport in Darfur, destroying planes, killing government soldiers and kidnapping the Sudanese air force commander. That was a turning point in the conflict, the prosecutor said, and led to intense recruiting of Arab militiamen, or janjaweed, who have been aligned with the Arab-dominated government.
The janjaweed focused on the civilian population, he said, on the rationale that they were supporters of the rebels.
“This strategy became the justification for the mass murder, summary execution and mass rape of civilians,” Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said.
At the time, Mr. Harun was the minister of state for the interior, and oversaw the Darfur Security Desk.
Mr. Harun was seen traveling with well guarded boxes of cash and was observed distributing money, weapons and ammunition throughout Darfur, according to the prosecutor’s statement, and worked closely with the militia leader, Mr. Rahman.
On one occasion, in early August 2003, Mr. Harun arrived by helicopter in the Darfur town of Mukjar as janjaweed militia were moving in and gave a public speech. According to the prosecutor, Mr. Harun said that since the children of the Fur tribe had become rebels, the Fur people and their possessions had become booty for the militia. Immediately upon his departure, the janjaweed “looted the entire town,” the prosecution statement said.
Mr. Rahman personally led the attack on Mukjar and three other villages and towns, the statement said. By mid-2003 he was commanding thousands of janjaweed. His forces pillaged and burned homes and shops, killed hundreds of people and tied women to trees and repeatedly raped them. According to the prosecution, Mr. Rahman took part in a number of summary executions.
He was arrested in Sudan in November and is being held on a different set of human rights violations.
Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said his staff tried to meet with him, and with Mr. Harun, in recent weeks, but the Sudanese government prevented it.
Public health workers are urging Americans to stock up and plan for the next emergency, but when it comes to their own lives, the cupboards are often bare, according to a recent survey by the American Public Health Association (APHA).
The APHA conducted an informal survey of its members in October and November and published the results in the December-January issue of its newsletter, The Nation’s Health. Of 4,100 public health workers who responded, 60% said they didn’t have evacuation plans for their households, 52% said they didn’t have emergency communication strategies for their families, and 81% didn’t know the evacuation plan for their community.
Though most said they had adequate emergency supplies such as matches, candles, and flashlights at home, few kept such supplies or food at work, and 60% said they weren’t aware of an evacuation plan at their workplace.
The American Red Cross recommends that Americans keep at least a 3-day supply of food and water for emergency use, but almost half of the respondents said they didn’t have drinking water set aside, and 35% said they lacked nonperishable food supplies.
In other results, 64% of respondents said they were “somewhat,” “very,” or “extremely” concerned about the threat of an influenza pandemic. The respondents listed natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes as the emergencies that worry them most.
Georges Benjamin, MD, executive director of the APHA, said the survey results point up a need for better education and outreach for the public health workforce, The Nation’s Health reported. In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina, public health workers have been advocating personal preparedness measures to the public, he said. “Unfortunately, in our efforts to reach others, we may be neglecting to prepare ourselves,” Benjamin added.
Personal preparedness for public health employees is vital to the larger disaster-response picture, because when the next emergency hits, workers will need to focus on helping victims and guiding evacuations, not worrying about themselves or their families, Benjamin said.
Daniel Barnett, MD, MPH, who teaches a personal preparedness course for public health workers at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, said recent terrorist attacks and natural disasters have raised expectations about the public health system’s capacity to respond to emergencies. “From preparedness kits to communication plans, personal and family readiness is fundamental to meeting these expectations,” he told CIDRAP News by e-mail. “The survey findings starkly highlight the need for enhanced instruction on personal readiness planning in all health departments.”
“Research has shown that public health workers are less likely to be willing to report to duty in emergencies due to concerns about personal and family safety,” Barnett said.
More than 60% of the survey respondents acknowledged a need to be more prepared. The APHA said some respondents reported that taking the emergency preparedness survey would motivate them to prepare at home and at work.
The APHA cautioned that the findings may not represent a complete picture of public health worker preparedness nationwide, because the respondents were self-selected and included only people who had Internet access. The organization said it plans to gauge the level of the public’s overall preparedness by conducting a formal survey in April during National Public Health Week.
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