Thursday, April 30, 2009

The origins of the swine flue pandemic

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The 39-year-old woman who was the first to die in Mexico's swine flu epidemic spent the last eight days of her life going from clinic to clinic to find out what was wrong with her but doctors were baffled.

The woman, from the southern state of Oaxaca, died shortly after being admitted to hospital as an emergency case. Experts only identified the virus that killed her 10 days later.

People learned to install anti-virus software on computers, but still cannot figure out an inexpensive way to treat fellow human beings. Our collective immune system needs help in building better diagnostics (detection) tools. Unlike the mind-reading devices of the "Minority Report", DNA tests for viruses are much easier to make and deploy. Especially, for high-risk individuals like this poor woman, who was a poll-taker, i.e. somebody who necessarily had to interact with hundreds, if not thousands, of people.

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