Interesting article in the Age Goodweekend about H5N1 and H1N1. Jeffery Taubenberger who seems to be one of the worlds leading authorities on the bird flu. Most alarming comment in the article is " Rather than originating from a reassortment of genes from both an avian and a mammaalian source, like the viruses that caused the later pandemics, the 1918 flu most likely began as a bird - adapted stain that,with just a handful of mutations, made itself at home in humans. To flu researchers and public-health officials, the resemblance of the 1918 sequence to those of common avian flus underscores the stark fact that there is more than one way for a virulent stain liike H5N1 to make the jump and become transmissible person to person.
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