Pigs can’t fly, but their viruses flew!

The common idiom states that pigs cannot fly. I don’t think this statement can be easily debated. However, the swine flu viruses now seem to have flown around the globe quickly (with cases in New Zealand, New York, Canada, California, and of course Mexico). As always, with such things that one cannot easily interpret, both news agencies and conspiracy theorists are always ahead of scientists with a mixture of quasi-scientific, scientifically inaccurate, and entertaining stories (or maybe not).

It is hard with conditions such as the current eventual flu pandemic to get the facts straight. I cannot claim having any additional knowledge, but I would rather read what the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Centers for Disease Control and prevention (CDC) have to say first:

WHO:

• 24 April 2009: Influenza-like illness in the United States and Mexico
• 26 April 2009: Swine flu illness in the United States and Mexico – update 2

CDC:

• MMWR April 24, 2009 / 58 (Dispatch);1-3 
  Update: Swine Influenza A (H1N1) Infections — California and Texas, April 2009 
• MMWR April 24, 2009 / 58(15);400-402: A case report 
  Swine Influenza A (H1N1) Infection in Two Children — Southern California, March–April 2009

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Bacteria become more virulent in a space shuttle?

Will bacteria become more dangerous if they travel in the space in a “weightless” environment?
Why would bacteria travel to space to start with? Obviously it could only happen in a space shuttle!

I found this story on the BBC web site

“Wherever humans go, microbes go; you can’t sterilise humans. Wherever we go, under the oceans or orbiting the Earth, the microbes go with us, and it’s important that we understand… how they’re going to change,” Cheryl Nickerson, from the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at Arizona State University, US, told the Associated Press.

• Read the full story here
• Read an older scientific article explaining this finding in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (for advanced readers only!)
• An older story about “bacteria on the moon”

Bacteria on the moon?

Streptococcus mitis is a unique bacterium… It made its way from Earth to the Moon!
Read the full story here…