首页
登录
职称英语
Many people today are worried about bird flu. They are afraid that it will p
Many people today are worried about bird flu. They are afraid that it will p
游客
2023-10-17
56
管理
问题
Many people today are worried about bird flu. They are afraid that it will pass from birds to humans and that thousands of people will die in a pandemic. In 1918 a flu virus killed about 50 million people around the world. The virus was called Spanish influenza (or Spanish flu, for short)because Spanish newspapers first described the disease. Now, after nine years of work, scientists in an American laboratory in Atlanta, Georgia, have produced a copy of the Spanish flu virus. They are also going to publish the genetic sequence of the virus on the Internet and some experts are afraid that other laboratories could copy the virus.
Scientists have copied the virus because they want to understand why the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic killed so many people. In a report in the journal Science, Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger and a team of scientists in the USA show that the copied virus is extremely powerful. The scientists injected the virus into mice and the mice began to lose weight very quickly. They lost 13% of their weight in two days and all of the mice died within six days.
" I didn’ t expect it to be as lethal as it was, " Dr. Terrence Tumpey, one of the scientists in the team, told the journal Nature. In another experiment, they injected more mice with a normal type of flu. The mice lost weight at first but then they got better and did not die. The experiments showed that the mice with the Spanish flu virus had 39,000 times more flu virus in their bodies than the second group of mice.
The scientists who copied the virus say their work has already provided important information about the virus and helps to explain why it is so lethal. But other expels are worried that the virus could escape from the laboratory. " Some people will think that they have really created a biological weapon." said Professor Ronald Atlas of the University of Louisville in Kentucky. " I am even more worried now than I was before about the possibility of a flu pandemic. The 1918 flu pandemic started with bird flu and that might happen again today with Asian bird flu."
Some scientists are worried about the publication of the genetic sequence on the Internet. They are afraid that biologists could copy the virus using the information on the Internet. This could be very dangerous.
It took a long time to copy the virus. Scientists used material taken from the lungs of people who died from the flu virus in 1918. In a second report in Nature, Taubenberger and his colleagues analyzed the genetic make-up of the virus. They were surprised to find that it was completely different from all the normal human flu viruses. This probably means that Spanish flu jumped from birds to humans and did not mix with a human virus first. This is very worrying for scientists because in the past everyone believed that a pandemic was only possible if a bird flu virus mixed with a human flu virus.
Taubenberger says it is very important to know what changes in the virus caused the 1918 Spanish flu virus. This will help scientists to work out which viruses might cause a pandemic. The H5N1 bird flu in Asia is already changing and it could infect humans, he said.
Viruses have escaped from high-security labs before. The SARS virus escaped at least twice, once in Taiwan and once in Singapore, But some scientists believe a pandemic will not happen even if the virus escapes, because most people are naturally immune and there are now a lot of drugs which protect people from flu.
Questions 66—70
Answer the following questions according to the passage. [br] When was the Spanish flu pandemic?
选项
答案
In 1918.
解析
根据第一段内容可知,1918年一种禽流感病毒致5千万人死亡。该病毒被称为西班牙流感病毒。由此可知西班牙流感病毒流行于1918年。
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3106830.html
相关试题推荐
In1932,______thedepression,theAmericanpeoplechoseFranklinD.Roosevelt
Changesinthewaypeoplelivebringaboutchangesinthejobsthattheydo.
Changesinthewaypeoplelivebringaboutchangesinthejobsthattheydo.
Changesinthewaypeoplelivebringaboutchangesinthejobsthattheydo.
Changesinthewaypeoplelivebringaboutchangesinthejobsthattheydo.
Changesinthewaypeoplelivebringaboutchangesinthejobsthattheydo.
Changesinthewaypeoplelivebringaboutchangesinthejobsthattheydo.
Afewyearsago,peopleinEnglandvotedforthegreatestpersonofalltime
Afewyearsago,peopleinEnglandvotedforthegreatestpersonofalltime
ResearchsaidthatyoungChinesepeopleare______expandingthesharingeconomy
随机试题
Time______,thecelebrationwillbeheldasscheduled.A、permitB、permittingC、p
Resourcescanbesaidtobescarceinbothanabsoluteandrelativesense:t
WhenaNewYorkerwashikinginEurope,hisSwissfriendkeptsaying"Listen
颊肌与下颌支之间为A.翼颌间隙 B.咬肌间隙 C.颞下间隙 D.颞间隙
51岁,绝经3年,白带增多1年,阴道流血1个月,查宫颈溃疡状,触之易出血,宫体正
“十三五”期间,全国普通高校毕业生人数平均每年增长:A.25万人 B.
A.甲类非处方药 B.终止妊娠药品 C.乙类非处方药 D.未列入非处方药目
A.烯丙吗啡 B.弱阿片类 C.强阿片类 D.纳洛酮 E.非甾体抗炎药中
下列关于年度预算平衡的说法,错误的是()。A.容易忽略潜在的财政风险 B
女婴,5个月。咳嗽伴发热三天,喘憋1天。无明显咳痰,体温波动在38~39℃,喘憋
最新回复
(
0
)