AUGUST 1997 I need a myth buster

BIRD FLU STARTED IN ALASKA IN AUG 1997

 and reached China/Siberia by a few migratory birds, probably by the Dunlin. These birds where pecking in an opened gravesite of a lady who died in 1918 from the Spanish Flu (H1N1 strain). Her body was exhumed in August 20 to retrieve cell tissues from her chest, so as to research the Spanish flu virus that killed an approximate 100 million people in 1918. The problem here is that in August 1997 Alaska had one of its warmest seasons in record,16 centigrades; the optimum temperature for virus growth. Another problem this gravesite was left open for 4 days before being recovered. The Doctor who exhumed her body used no quarantine measures,. Just a shovel and garden tools. Her body must have started to decompose and enter the soil organisms. It just needed a Dunlin (shorebird)to peck around and eat one of these organisms so as to reactivate this virus in its intestines, which is the optimum environment for the virus (H1N1) to reactivate. The Dunlin migrates from Alaska to Siberia, then to China in early autumn. 4 month later on December 15th 1997 we have the first Bird Flu deaths in quantity in Hong Kong. Shoham believes that the influenza virus is the most likely to emerge from the freeze/thaw process in a fit enough state to re-infect humans. "It has the properties that would allow it to survive the ice and the ability to transfer between animals and humans once it is out," he says.
The avian influenza virus can remain viable for long periods of time at moderate temperatures, and can survive indefinitely in frozen material.
However, the virus is clearly recombining and reassorting, so it could also reassort with H5N1 to produce an H1N1 with H5N1 internal genes or it could recombine, placing an H1N1 receptor binding sequence on an H5N1 virus.

See how big this hole was; it stayed open for 4 days before being recovered. Enough time for optimum thaw for a dormant virus to revive especially in the middle of August in Alaska. This spot lays a few meters form the sea shore which logically is full of shorebirds who would curiously peck into this nearby hole. These northern shorebirds migrate in early autumn to Siberia and China.

On his solitary expedition, the San Francisco physician carried just one tool: a pair of garden clippers borrowed, without permission, from his wife. He found, buried in the sub arctic permafrost, a corpse containing remnants of the elusive 1918 virus. The tissue Hultin retrieved from that corpse is now helping federal researchers unlock the microscopic secrets behind the pandemic. In 1997, he learned of the work of a government scientist, Dr. Jeffrey K. Taubenberger, a molecular pathologist at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology who was attempting to map the 1918 virus using minute specimens collected in 1918 and embedded in wax. Hultin wrote a cordial, stupefying letter: Would Taubenberger be interested in tissue if Hultin could dig it up? Stunned, Taubenberger said yes.Hultin set out alone for Alaska a week later.Ironically, at the same time, a similar, considerably higher-profile expedition was under way on a remote Norwegian island some 800 miles from the Arctic Circle.Led by Kirsty Duncan, a young geographer at the University of Windsor and the University of Toronto, the mission was to determine if the bodies of seven young miners, who'd crossed the Norwegian Sea in 1918 in search of work, contained frozen remnants of the killer virus. According to "Flu," by New York Times reporter Gina Kolata, Duncan believed the bodies might yield answers, but the project was rife with uncertainty. If the bodies had been buried in an area subject to melting and refreezing, hope of finding the virus would vanish - the influenza virus was delicate, if exposed to room temperature for even one hour it would die.Duncan put together an impressive, well-financed team including world-class scientists from England, Canada and the U.S. The costly project, taking about four years to plan, generated worldwide publicity and debates over the potential danger of releasing live flu viruses from the bodies of the long- dead miners. That mission ended in disappointment - the ground the miners were buried in had thawed and refrozen. By contrast, Hultin's homespun expedition, which took mere days to plan, generated no publicity and cost $3,200, which Hultin himself paid.In Alaska, he found the village had changed considerably, now with a post office and mayor. Hultin met with the village matriarch. That very afternoon, Hultin started digging with the help of several young men. "I could have done it myself, but it would have taken weeks, so I accepted their help," he says.That night, and for the rest of his week in Alaska, Hultin slept on the floor of the village school.
Four days after opening the ground, Hultin discovered, seven feet deep, a woman's corpse. Fancifully, he dubbed her Lucy. Later he learned that Lucy had been an obese woman who died from the flu in her mid-20s.
Using his wife's pruning shears, Hultin opened Lucy's mummified rib cage. There he found two frozen lungs, the very tissue he n-needed. "Her lungs were magnificent, full of blood," Hultin says. He removed the lungs, sliced them, placed them in preserving fluid. Then he and the village helpers replaced the graveyard sod.

 http://www.recombinomics.com/News/02250601/H5N1_Swan_Italy_Sequence.html