H1N1 Virus

H1N1 virus

Is it a man-made, genetically-engineered virus?

Conspiracy theories about the H1N1 virus being a man-made, genetically-engineered virus began to emerge very soon after the H1N1 swine flu outbreak began in mid-April 2009. Most of these theories centre around the idea that the flu virus was created — and a H1N1 virus flu pandemic hastily declared by the World Health Organisation (WHO) — as part of a plan to boost the sale of flu drugs and vaccines, which will earn pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars.
It is not just because some people are sceptical. As one commentator rightly pointed out, there were no similar theories being circulated — or at least none were taken seriously — when the avian flu first appeared some years ago.
With the current H1N1 virus, the circumstances are highly suspicious. And some of the theories about H1N1 being a man-made virus are coming from prominent scientists.

Professor Adrian Gibbs
One of them is Professor Adrian Gibbs, a 75-year-old semi-retired Australian researcher who is an expert on viruses. Prof Gibbs had authored more than 250 scientific publications on viruses during his 40-year career at the Australian National University in Canberra. He had also worked with the Swiss drug maker, Roche, to develop the anti-viral flu drug, oseltamivir or Tamiflu,
Adrian Gibbs was among the first scientists to analyse the genetic makeup of the H1N1 virus. Just three weeks after the virus was first identified in Mexico, Adrian Gibbs stunned the world by declaring that the H1N1 virus could have accidentally evolved in eggs that scientists use to grow viruses and drug makers use while making vaccines.
In a 13 May 2009 interview with Bloomberg Television, Professor Adrian Gibbs said he reached his conclusion while working to trace the H1N1?s origins by analyzing its genetic blueprint. ?It could be a mistake? that occurred at a vaccine production facility or the virus could have jumped from a pig to another mammal or a bird before reaching humans, Gibbs said.
The WHO took Prof Gibbs’ theory seriously enough to evaluate it but dismissed it a few days later as having no evidence. Indeed Gibbs himself acknowledged that there was no evidence and did not rule out other possible explanations for the origins of the H1N1 virus. But Adrian Gibbs said: “One of the simplest explanations is that it?s a laboratory escape.”

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Too many ‘ancestors’
What gave Professor Adrian Gibbs this idea? He was analysing the genetic blueprint of the H1N1 virus. In layman’s language, it means he was finding out who were the “ancestors” of the H1N1 virus. And his conclusion was that the H1N1 has too many — and too diverse — “ancestors” to develop naturally.
He was not the only, nor the first person to reach this conclusion. Even before Professor Gibbs’ stunning proclamation, it was already known that the H1N1 virus has the genetic codes of:
• Human influenza
• Bird Flu from North America
• Swine flu from Europe
• Swine flu from Asia.
On 27 April 2009, two weeks before Prof Gibb’s interview, an article appeared on NaturalNews.com titled As Swine Flu Spreads, Conspiracy Theories of Laboratory Origins Abound.
Mike Adams, editor of NaturalNews, states that he is “not a medical specialist in the area of infectious disease, but I have studied microbiology, genetics and a considerable amount of material on pandemics.” Commenting on the genetic codes of the H1N1 virus, Mike Adams wrote:
… it means an infected bird from North America would have had to infect pigs in Europe, then be re-infected by those same pigs with an unlikely cross-species mutation that allowed the bird to carry it again, then that bird would have had to fly to Asia and infected pigs there, and those Asian pigs then mutated the virus once again (while preserving the European swine and bird flu elements) to become human transmittable, and then a human would have had to catch that virus from the Asian pigs ? in Mexico! ? and spread it to others. (This isn?t the only explanation of how it could have happened, but it is one scenario that gives you an idea of the complexity of such a thing happening).

Not from swines
Another puzzle / suspicion about the 2009 H1N1 swine flu is that even though it is supposed to be a swine flu, the H1N1 virus has never been found in pigs.
This is highly unusual. In past outbreaks of swine flu, the virus was passed from pigs to humans, who then passed it on to other humans. In the case of the H1N1 virus, its genetic code indicates that it came from pigs. But the virus had not been found in pigs.
This could, of course, simply mean that viruses in pigs had not been closely monitored enough by scientists. It could also mean that the virus was created in a laboratory.
Creating viruses and bacteria in a laboratory is, of couse, nothing new. Pharmaceutical companies do it routinely to research and develop new drugs and vaccines. Military establishments also do it as part of “germ warfare” — the fact that germ warfare is banned by international convention does not stop such research from being carried out.
The question is whether the virus was released intentionally or accidentally.

The Baxter ‘accident’
One such “accident” recently involved the drug company Baxter, which is one of two companies contracted by WHO to produced a vaccine against the H1N1 virus.
In February 2009, Baxter sent out vaccine samples containing live H5N1 bird flu viruses. The samples were sent to 18 countries from Baxter’s Austrian laboratory and the contamination was discovered by laboratory workers in the Czech Replublic.
If not for that discovery, that “accident” would have indeed caused a serious avian flu pandemic, as the avian flu is much more lethal than the curren H1N1 swine flu. Baxter admitted the “mistake” but set many people thinking if it was a genuine mistake, because pharmaceutical companies are supposed to have many levels of controls that make such an “accident” virtually impossible. So again, this fuelled conspiracy theories.was sent out by accident from an Austrian lab [the Austrian branch of US vaccine company, Baxter] last year and given to ferrets in the Czech Republic before anyone realised. As well as the risk of it escaping into the wild, the H5N1 got mixed with a human strain, which might have spawned a hybrid that could unleash a pandemic.
‘This was infected with a bird flu virus.’ Viral Pandemic H5N1 flu threat: Illinois-based Baxter contaminates European labs by error 25 Feb 2009 According to the scientific network PROMED, Baxter International Inc. in Austria “unintentionally contaminated samples with the bird flu virus that were used in laboratories in 3 neighboring countries, raising concern about the potential spread of the deadly disease”. As PROMED reports, the contamination has been discovered when ferrets at a laboratory in the Czech Republic died after being inoculated with vaccine made from the samples early this month. “The material came from Deerfield, Illinois-based Baxter, which reported the incident to the Austrian Ministry of Health, Sigrid Rosenberger, a ministry spokeswoman, said today in a telephone interview”, the network-alert-system is quoting. “This was infected with a bird flu virus,” Rosenberger said. “There were some people from the company who handled it.”
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History of the H1N1 virus
Even the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) speculates about the accidental release of viruses from laboratories — not in the current swine flu outbreak, but in an earlier outbreak in 1977.
In an article titled Historical Perspective ? Emergence of Influenza A (H1N1) Viruses that traces NEJM traces the history of the H1N1 virus from the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and noted that the H1N1 virus had become “extinct” by 1957, probably because the human population built up immunity against it over the decades.
In 1976, there was a limited outbreak of the virus among US soldiers at Fort Dix. This led to a disastrous swine flu vaccination campaign in which 40 million Americans were vaccinated and thousands suffered serious side effects, including 532 who developed the crippling disease, Guillian Barre Syndrome, and 32 who died from the vaccine. That 1976 virus proved non-virulent. It did not spread beyond Fort Dix and an epidemic did not materialise.
In 1977, however, a new swine flu H1N1 virus emerged. The NEJM wrote:
Even though human influenza A (H1N1) virus had not circulated since 1957 and the swine influenza A (H1N1) virus that had been identified at Fort Dix did not extend outside the base, in November 1977, the H1N1 strain reemerged in the former Soviet Union, Hong Kong, and northeastern China. This strain affected primarily young people in a relatively mild presentation. Careful study of the genetic origin of the virus showed that it was closely related to a 1950 strain but dissimilar to influenza A (H1N1) strains from both 1947 and 1957.
This finding suggested that the 1977 outbreak strain had been preserved since 1950. The reemergence was probably an accidental release from a laboratory source in the setting of waning population immunity to H1 and N1 antigens.

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So the idea of flu viruses being released from laboratories is not too far-fetched or overly cynical. It is certainly not restricted to those who hold extreme views about conspiracy theories.
It has happened before. During the Second World War, Japan dropped “bombs” containting the bunonic plague bacteria. The 1977 H1N1 virus is most probably a man-made virus that came from a laboratory. Whether the 2009 swine flu virus is similarly a man-made virus — and if so, whether it was released deliberately or accidentally — remains to be seen.
Whatever the case, one thing is already clear. Drug companies that make antiviral drugs like Tamiflu and Relenza are already reaping huge benefits. Those that produce flu vaccines are set to follow.
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