Pandemic Payoff from 1918: A Weaker H1N1 Flu Today
Friday, October 9, 2009 - 12:07
in Health & Medicine
Editor's Note: This story is scheduled to appear in the November issue of Scientific American and is being published early due to recent news regarding the H1N1 vaccine. Although the swine flu outbreak of 2009 is still in full swing, this global influenza epidemic, the fourth in 100 years, is already teaching scientists valuable lessons about pandemics past, those that might have been and those that still might be. Evidence accumulated this summer indicates that the novel H1N1 swine flu virus was not entirely new to all human immune systems. Some researchers have even come to see the current outbreak as a flare-up in an ongoing pandemic era that started when the first H1N1 emerged in 1918. [More]