Guest guest Posted May 11, 2003 Report Share Posted May 11, 2003 This SARS info. is SO important to pass out far and wide. Dewey has even put up a page of pertinent info. regarding the SARS scam on the VacLib website here http://www.vaclib.org/news/sarsscam.htm The following excellent articles have been forwarded by Sheri Nakken. If you REALLY want the scoop on SARS, go to www.sarstravel.com ~ingri " It's effects are out of all proportion to proven health dangers. It is now time for responsible journalism " - hah! why start now http://www.sarstravel.com/sars_wobbles.htm http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-655988,00.html World Health Organization Corona Virus Theory Wobbles by Fintan Dunne SarsTravel.com April 23, 2003 For the last ten days we have been telling you the World Health Organization (WHO) research team were getting it all wrong. Today, the Times of London is reporting that scientists: " have suffered a setback after finding that the [corona]virus blamed for the potentially fatal disease was not present in most patients taken ill. " What an admission! Because on April 16, the WHO officially said corona virus was the cause of SARS. But see what the top Canadian researcher in SARS, Dr. Frank Plummer, scientific director of the Canadian National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, told the London Times: " Only 40 per cent of the people with what we call Sars have the corona virus. We have found no other virus but the connection between Sars and corona is actually very weak, " he said. In fact, the percentage of Canadian SARS samples in which the official cause of SARS can be found has declined, according to Dr. Plummer's statements to the media, from 60% to 50% and now, to 40%. And not only is Dr. Plummer finding corona virus in only a minority of so-called SARS cases, but as reported on SarsTravel.com over a week ago, he has been finding so little of the virus that he doubts it could be the cause. WIDE IMPLICATIONS The implication of all this for the current SARS theory advocated by the 11 WHO laboratories engaged on SARS research are potentially very embarrassing if not downright catastrophic. Dick Thompson, a spokesperson for the WHO, kicked to touch on the possible consequences. " For now, we stand by our view that the corona virus is the cause, but what we need to investigate is why we have this anomaly in Canada, " he told the London Times. His use of the words " for now " is ominous in this context. And Dr. Marc-André Beaulieu, senior medical adviser with Health Canada, told The Times that all scientists and government departments working on Sars should now be " more prudent " . In other words, as SarsTravel.com has maintained, there has been a rush to judgment by the WHO and other health authorities. The claimed 200 plus deaths from SARS are but a subset of the three to four million deaths annually, worldwide from " regular " pneumonia. If there is to be any validity to extracting these deaths from the generality of pneumonia cases, there must be an underlying pathogen present in the vast majority of cases. SARS does not derive any scientific validity merely because it is a catchy acronym. So, will the WHO and other health authorities now cut their claimed SARS cases to only those which show presence of corona virus? No. They will still play the numbers game by focussing on " probable " cases. Cases of what, exactly? That's the key question now. SUPERSPREADERS OF WHAT? Because even if corona virus is present, there is very little of it there. To be a valid cause of the claimed respiratory syndrome there must be sufficient titers of the virus to exercise a debilitating effect on the patients. SARS cases should be teeming with the virus. Instead as Dr. Plummer had previously stated, there is so little that researchers have had to rely on a tool of forensic scientists, Polymerase Chain Reaction(PCR) to find copies of the virus. That's not good enough. Another anomaly has plagued the SARS clinical definition. There seem to be two varieties of the disease -not one. The first has a low transmission rate. For example of the over 200 " probable " cases of SARS in the USA, the Centers for Disease Control has reported no deaths and only 35 likely to be actually SARS. The five patients tested by the CDC and found to have detectable corona virus have all recovered. No hospital wards were closed. No epidemic has erupted. By comparison, Hong Kong and Toronto have had significant in-hospital transmission of the disease. That has led to the term " superspreaders " being employed to try account for the anomaly. However, while attending at the International Symposium on SARS in Taipei on Monday, Hong Kong's Professor Yuen Kwok-yung has discounted the term. Here's his exchange with the Taipei Times: Taipei Times: One of the reasons why Taiwan has reported far fewer SARS cases than Hong Kong and Singapore is that it Taiwan does not have any " superspreaders. " What makes " superspreaders " more contagious than other patients of the disease? Yuen Kwok-yung: We do not know exactly what a " superspreader " is at the moment. This is basically an epidemiological definition, in which a lot of people get infected by the same patient. They call the patient a " superspreader. " But the concept has not yet been proven. Well said. A virus does not vary it's infectivity at will or ad hoc. Nor is " mutation " of the virus either proven or likely to account for the discrepancy. The " mutation " and " superspreader " concepts may be simply a fudge to try account for the fact that there is no one definitive cause or outcome for SARS. Put another way, we are now skirting close to a realization that SARS is an artificial and spurious assembly. Merely a small subset of the vast number of existing pneumonia cases. No new unique disease. No proven viral cause. Just sporadic incidents of high transmission of a pneumonia linked to open sewage --as in the Amoy Gardens, Kong Kong outbreak. Theese are the kind of sporadic anomalies we would anyway expect to find in any subset of the vast number of pneumonia cases worldwide. Therefore, just an epidemic of existing pneumonia wrapped in a new concept called SARS. MEME OR SYNDROME The SARS concept is a meme --a term coined by Professor Richard Dawkins. Memes are contagious information patterns which replicate by infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to propagate the pattern. Slogans, catch-phrases, and fashions are typical memes. In our instant electronic world, pernicious memes like SARS can spread faster than any disease pathogen. Right now, the SARS meme is has gripped health authorities and the public. It's effects are out of all proportion to proven health dangers. It is now time for responsible journalism. And as we argued over a week ago, it's time for prudent, well researched and balanced pronouncements about SARS by health authorities. Times Article April 23, 2003 Scientists find there is no quick cure for Sars By James Doran in Toronto and Oliver Wright SCIENTISTS searching for a cure for severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) have suffered a setback after finding that the virus blamed for the potentially fatal disease was not present in most patients taken ill. The World Health Organisation announced last week that the corona virus - responsible for the common cold - was at the root of the epidemic of a virulent strain of pneumonia. But Dr Frank Plummer, scientific director of the Canadian National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, refuted the claim yesterday afterweeks of intensive research into the disease that has killed 14 people in Toronto. " Only 40 per cent of the people with what we call Sars have the corona virus. We have found no other virus but the connection between Sars and corona is actually very weak, " he said. A WHO spokesman said that it was aware of the Canadian findings and was investigating. Dick Thompson, for the WHO, said that in previous tests carried out for the organisation the corona virus had been present in 90 per cent of all cases. " For now, we stand by our view that the corona virus is the cause, but what we need to investigate is why we have this anomaly in Canada, " he said. " One possibility is that it has been present in all the cases but is simply not being picked up at the time of testing. All the cases in Canada came from one infected person. We need to see if the virus has mutated. " On April 16, Dr Klaus Stohr, of the WHO, released the results of a series of experiments on monkeys infected with Sars. " We can now say with all confidence that the causative agent of Sars is the corona virus first detected in Hong Kong on March 21, " he said. But Dr Marc-André Beaulieu, senior medical adviser with Health Canada, said that all scientists and government departments working on Sars should now be " more prudent " . The announcement by Canadian officials came as researchers in British Columbia claimed to be doing a trial of a test for Sars on patients with suspected or probable symptoms of the disease. The researchers said that they were making progress and hoped to have a test available to the public within weeks. But Dr Beaulieu said: " In order to develop a good diagnostic test you have to have a clear definition of the cause. For us this means we now have to be more prudent. We are saying that we would prefer to have a much more clear understanding of what causes the disease. " The revelations from Health Canada coincided with an emergency meeting between Canadian health officials and senior officials from the American Centres for Disease Control. American officials have become increasingly worried about the spread of Sars over the US-Canadian border. Travellers to Toronto are being asked to monitor their health while in the city and during the ten days after their return. A Briton may have died from the virus after returning to Wales from a holiday in Thailand. Tests are being conducted to see if a 33-year-old man who died at his home in Pontypridd, South Wales, had the virus. Staff at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital, in Llantrisant, are taking steps to prevent any spread of the contagious disease if the result is positive. ************************************************* News from health officials in Ontario -- figuring out the WHO scam... Panic replacing logic on SARS, says former Health Chief http://www.sarstravel.com/schabas.htm Dr. Richard Schabas was Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health from 1987 until 1997. He is still active in public health as a speaker, author and consultant. " SARS may disappear as mysteriously as it appeared. This could happen if SARS is insufficiently infectious to sustain transmission in our social environment. " Panic replacing logic on SARS, says former Health Chief April 24 2003 SarsTravel.com FROM CANADIAN PRESS People in Toronto have a far greater chance of dying from influenza, a car crash or smoking than they do from SARS, says Dr. Richard Schabas, who's among health professionals in the SARS trenches nearly round the clock. " This terrible panic that has seized Toronto is leaving the popular impression that the SARS outbreak is growing and it's spreading in the community - nothing could be further from the truth, " Schabas, chief of staff at York Central Hospital in nearby Richmond Hill, said in an interview today. Still, panic is slowly replacing logic as SARS worries spread, said Schabas, Ontario's former chief medical officer of health. " Certainly SARS is a serious problem that needs to be dealt with seriously, " he wrote in a commentary in the Canadian Medical Association Journal which was released Wednesday on the journal's Web site. " Yet our actions must be based on facts and experience, not on fears. The response should not be worse than the disease. " These are the facts: every case of SARS in Toronto can be traced to the original case. There are currently about 100 people in hospital in Ontario, almost all of them in the Toronto area, with suspect or probable SARS. The number is decreasing: a week ago, 128 people were in hospital. Of the 16 Toronto-area residents who have died from the syndrome, only two were under the age of 60. Most were 70 or older; one victim was 99. Like any acute infection, the elderly and those with poor immune systems are most at risk of death. Infection-control professionals stress that SARS is restricted to hospital settings. " We have not seen and continue to not see casual transmission of cases, " James Young, Ontario's safety commissioner, told media Wednesday. " It is perfectly safe to walk down the streets in Toronto. " But that doesn't stop the fears of people like Sheila Odorico, a hairdresser in Burlington, just west of Toronto. Odorico, 36, won't be visiting relatives in Toronto until SARS dies down. " I even wear rubber gloves now cutting my customers' hair, " said Odorico. " No way I'm going into Toronto for now. " " When SARS first arrived, there was great apprehension it would be the next pandemic, " Schabas said in the interview. " People have been so worried about what SARS might do that they're not paying attention to what it's not doing. " It's really only ever been a hospital problem, and since we've put precautions in place in Toronto-area hospitals, the number of cases has really nose-dived. " Schabas has determined that in the two-month period since SARS hit Ontario, there have been about 100 deaths from influenza, 200 deaths from motor-vehicle crashes and 2,000 deaths from tobacco addiction. And for anyone thinking just breathing Toronto air will give you SARS, Schabas offers this: it is most likely transmitted by respiratory droplets, not spread in the air. That means someone with SARS would have to practically sneeze on you or touch your face after touching theirs to pass it on. It is also unlikely to be spread by brief contact. Still, Wednesday's WHO warning - which marked the first time an area outside Asia has been targeted - left many Canadians wondering if they should avoid Toronto. Health Minister Jane Purves of Nova Scotia advised residents of the province to put off non-essential travel to Toronto. Dr. Donald Low, one of Canada's leading infection control professionals, was livid about the WHO's warning. " I think that I would be the first to say that if I was concerned about risk of transmission (to travellers), I sure wouldn't want to put anybody at risk. But I don't see any evidence to support that, " said Low, microbiologist-in-chief at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. In his commentary in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Schabas noted the " future of SARS is uncertain. " A number of scenarios are plausible. The disease may yet develop into a major pandemic, with explosive growth in the number of cases, but I consider this very unlikely given the behaviour of the outbreak to date. " At the opposite extreme, SARS may disappear as mysteriously as it appeared. This could happen if SARS is insufficiently infectious to sustain transmission in our social environment. " ************************************************** Ingri Cassel, President Vaccination Liberation - Idaho Chapter P.O. Box 1444 Coeur d'Alene, ID 83816 (208)255-2307/ 765-8421 vaclib www.vaclib.org " Free Your Mind.... >From The Vaccine Paradigm " Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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