In 1918 Pandemic, Another Possible Killer: Aspirin

[snopes]

The 1918 flu epidemic was probably the deadliest plague in human history, killing more than 50 million people worldwide. Now it appears that a small number of the deaths may have been caused not by the virus, but by a drug used to treat it: aspirin.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/health/13aspirin.html

[DawnStorm]

John M. Barry, author of a book on the 1918 flu titled “The Great Influenza.”

[quote]

Very good read, and also includes a good history of how medical education evolved in the US.

[Brad from Georgia]

Barry's book is very well-written and very thorough. I second the recommendation that people read it.

My brother-in-law (who believes in practically every wacko conspiracy you can think of) is firmly convinced that the H1N1 virus was cloned from 1918 flu virus (because bodies of flu victims were exhumed and the virus was isolated from their tissues) and released as a bioweapon to further Obama's cause of medical insurance reform.....

[DawnStorm]

Originally Posted by Brad from Georgia

My brother-in-law (who believes in practically every wacko conspiracy you can think of) is firmly convinced that the H1N1 virus was cloned from 1918 flu virus (because bodies of flu victims were exhumed and the virus was isolated from their tissues) and released as a bioweapon to further Obama's cause of medical insurance reform.....

You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding.

[Lainie]

Originally Posted by Brad from Georgia

My brother-in-law (who believes in practically every wacko conspiracy you can think of) is firmly convinced that the H1N1 virus was cloned from 1918 flu virus (because bodies of flu victims were exhumed and the virus was isolated from their tissues) and released as a bioweapon to further Obama's cause of medical insurance reform.....

He does know they've been buried for nearly 100 years, right? And that many of them were embalmed?

[Brad from Georgia]

I'm not kidding. He listens to some weirdo radio show (he is blind) and the H1N1/healthcare reform conspiracy apparently has been an issue there. Of course, the Spanish flu virus was first recovered not last year, but more than a decade ago.

[dfresh]

Originally Posted by Brad from Georgia

more than a decade ago.

So it was Clinton, or an Obama/Clinton teamup. Yep, pretty much what you'd expect from those dastardly types.

[threehead_99]

Originally Posted by Brad from Georgia

My brother-in-law (who believes in practically every wacko conspiracy you can think of) is firmly convinced that the H1N1 virus was cloned from 1918 flu virus (because bodies of flu victims were exhumed and the virus was isolated from their tissues) and released as a bioweapon to further Obama's cause of medical insurance reform.....

This makes more sense to me than landing on the moon. I actually chuckled a little bit when I read it though.

[Magpye]

Originally Posted by Brad from Georgia

I'm not kidding. He listens to some weirdo radio show (he is blind) and the H1N1/healthcare reform conspiracy apparently has been an issue there. Of course, the Spanish flu virus was first recovered not last year, but more than a decade ago.

Oh, darn, you beat me to it... I was going to mention that it was perfectly plausible to recover samples of the virus from people who'd been buried in permafrost, as many of the villagers here were.

[Brad from Georgia]

Originally Posted by Magpye

Oh, darn, you beat me to it... I was going to mention that it was perfectly plausible to recover samples of the virus from people who'd been buried in permafrost, as many of the villagers here were.

Even before that researchers got part of the gene sequence of the virus from tissue samples taken from soldiers who had died of the Spanish flu. The samples had been preserved since 1918, and in 1997, IIRC, the partial decoding of the genetics was done.

And looky, here is the lowdown on how the U.S. weaponized Spanish flu into the swine flu . . . though dedicated conspiracy researcher A. True Ott (I am not making this up) doesn't seem to connect that to the healthcare reform movement....though John D. Rockefeller created the Spanish flu.

Brad "here, kid, here's a dime. Get sick and die" from Georgia

[Steve Eisenberg]

Originally Posted by Brad from Georgia

Barry's book is very well-written and very thorough. I second the recommendation that people read it.

I third it.

Now, I do remember from that book stories of near instant death -- young healthy adults who got on a trolley car in perfect health and died before reaching their stop. I don't think they died of aspirin poisoning. Although, come to think of it, that kind of story sounds a lot like a UL.

I can see how feverish adults in South Philadelphia rowhouses, gravely ill as carts came down the street with cries of bring out your dead, would be given too much aspirin by their desperate children and parents. But wouldn't the pharmacies have run out of pills?

It's a kindness that this didn't come out until all of the caregivers, who may have located large quantities of aspirin only with great difficulty, have themselves died.

[DawnStorm]

Originally Posted by Brad from Georgia

Even before that researchers got part of the gene sequence of the virus from tissue samples taken from soldiers who had died of the Spanish flu. The samples had been preserved since 1918, and in 1997, IIRC, the partial decoding of the genetics was done.

/

I remember hearing about that--IIRC, the people who exhumed the soldiers took every imaginable precaution, including wearing haz-mat suits.

[Brad from Georgia]

Actually, the exhumed bodies were, IIRC, those of native Americans in Alaska. They had been buried in permafrost, and so their tissues and the viruses had been preserved. The samples from soldiers were from lung tissue that had been preserved in alcohol or formaldehyde.

But, yes, they treated the tissues as hazardous materials with all that that implies.

[Lainie]

Originally Posted by DawnStorm

I remember hearing about that--IIRC, the people who exhumed the soldiers took every imaginable precaution, including wearing haz-mat suits.

I think you're thinking of some other story -- I'm pretty sure Brad was talking about tissue samples saved from autopsies, hence:

The samples had been preserved since 1918. . .