Tag Archives: marburg

Influenza

Operation Jupiter: U.S. DoD Bat research and Hemorrhagic Diseases!

Video

In June 2018, the U.S. Department of Defense-Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s (DTRA) Chemical and Biological Technologies Department revealed their continued research involving bat and human and the hemorrhagic Marburg virus.

Marburg virus image via F. A. Murphy, 1968.

Bats can ‘clear’ the virus from their bodies, so researchers had long surmised that bats have potent antiviral defenses compared to other mammals.  However, the results of the study published in 2018 concluded that bats do not have a stronger immune system, than other animals!

The study was published under the title of The Egyptian Rousette Genome Reveals Unexpected Features of Bat Antiviral Immunity.  Scientists did discover that fruit bats can produce 22 type-I interferon omega anti-viral ‘copies’, while humans produce only one anti-viral copy, which seems to explain why bats can be infected with many killer diseases and survive.

U.S. Army DTRA video promoting the study of bats to cure human diseases, released 14JUN2018:

Operation Jupiter: U.S. DoD EXPERIMENTED WITH BATS FOR VACCINES!

PROJECT SEA RAVEN, U.S. Navy SEARCHING FOR NEW DISEASES IN CAPE VERDE

International

Killer disease out of Africa, 100 children dead in four weeks!

28 May 2013 (12:52 UTC-07 Tango)/18 Rajab 1434/07 Khordad 1391/19 Ding-Si (4th month) 4711

In Benin, on the continent of Africa, local TV reports say more than 100 people, mostly children, have died from a strange and violent disease in the past four weeks.

To make things worse, the only health official in the area of Dekin is a mid-wife who runs the area’s only health center.  Reports say the victims are vomiting blood and making a strange “snoring” like sound.

According to French news media reports, the symptoms are “Fever, vomiting, and simultaneous bleeding from the nostrils, followed by strange breathing sounds, and finally the victims’ heart stops.”

French reports also say the disease kills children within 24 hours of infection.  Apparently the adults have more resistance, and those adults infected are reported to be “languishing” in the local health clinic.  There are no certified nurses or doctors at the clinic.

Many of those infected do not have access to clean drinking water and have been drinking water from the same watering holes used by wild animals.

A commenter on ProMED believes this is a new hemorrhagic fever, similar to the Marburg or Ebola viruses.

Benin is a country sandwiched between Togo and Nigeria.

(here’s something scary; last year Canadian researchers concluded that Ebola could become airborne)