Braced for Impact

Seed company consolidation

Link: .

According to ETC Group, the top 10 multinational seed firms control half of the world's commercial seed sales (a total worldwide market of approximately US$21,000 million per annum). Corporate control and ownership of seeds - the first link in the food chain - has far-reaching implications for global food security.

You can download the PDF report. Also see this commentary from Grist.

Flu Pandemic not a problem -- HHS Secretary

Link: US sends mixed message on bird flu threat - Yahoo! News.

The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said an influenza pandemic that could kill millions is certain and may be imminent.

However U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt, while urging preparations for a possible outbreak, said the risk was relatively low and a pandemic probably would not happen.

"The probability that we'll have a pandemic flu is unknown," Leavitt said at a Washington health technology conference. "I will tell you from all I hear from scientists and physicians it is relatively low, but it is not zero."

His last gig wasn't generating reports on WMD in Iraq was it?

Helen Branswell (primo flu reporter) on Resurrecting the 1918 bug

Link: Health | canada.com.

Everyone seems to be reading the NY Times, but Branswell is the reporter to read on this issue. It ain't good news...

Like H5N1 (the current avian flu), the 1918 virus appears to be of entirely avian origin, and appears to have acquired the ability to infect people by undergoing a series of small mutations to all eight of its genes, a process called recombination.

Should we be worried?

The 1918 virus killed upwards of 50 million people - more than the First World War - between 1918 and 1919 and reserved its harshest blow for previously healthy young adults.

The good news is, the Prez has an idea about quarantines enforced by the military.

Effect Measure: Tularemia on the Mall: Heck of a job, Chertie

Link: Effect Measure: Tularemia on the Mall: Heck of a job, Chertie.

More flu-related news . . . Effect Measure notes the Boston Globe report on the biosecurity snafu at the antiwar protests in DC a couple weekends ago.

More than a half-dozen sensors showed the presence of tularemia bacteria the morning after thousands of people gathered on the Mall for a book festival and antiwar rally. The CDC was not contacted for at least 72 hours.

(Note: The lack of coordination between the book festival and the protests was also regrettable . . . )

But it was okay, I guess, since those alarms were false positives anyway. This makes me feel a whole lot better about the efficacy of those sensors gathering dust in Metro stations.

Flu Train's A-comin'

Link: Health | canada.com.

As anyone with kids in preschool or school knows, children are the primary vectors for whatever exotic bug is going around. A recent study seems to show that... (no, really?)

Preschoolers may signal the arrival of flu season. Thirty days after hacking three- and four-year-olds start showing up in doctors' offices and emergency rooms, flu-ridden adults follow.

Since most flu-related deaths are in the elderly, that's where the vacinnation programs have focused. Since we keep many of our elderly conveniently housed where we can't see them, but where flu can quickly spread through a whole institution, it makes sense to continue to put lots of vaccine resources there. Maybe we can add some kid-intervention too.

As any parent knows, the best place for your kid (and eventually, you) to pick up some really nasty infection in the a pediatrician's waiting room. The next best place (for me at least) seems to be standing in a crowded, overheated, Metro train with somebody sneezing on the back of my neck.

All this, of course, with an eye toward the apparently universally-accepted notion that the avian flu pandemic is imminent.

Tulane Recovery from Katrina

Tulane University is fighting a host of problems as it works to reopen following Hurricane Katrina.

Students are scattered around the country with some withholding tuition checks. The medical school's 325 doctors have no billing system to collect their fees. Some of the university's most prestigious research -- including the world's longest-running study of heart disease in children -- is in shambles.

While the school is trying to play hardball with its athletes, faculty-looting competitors, and students, it is also working hard to play a leading role in the New New Orleans. When New Orleans announced that it would not open its elementary schools this year, Tulane decided to open its own for faculty and staff children. Tulane is a microcosm for a lot of decisions that New Orleans is facing.

Tulane's leaders also fret about rebuilding a mostly white enclave of schools and services in a predominantly black city. Founded in 1834, Tulane has "always stood aloof from direct intervention in New Orleans's problems," says Clarence Mohr, a professor at the University of South Alabama and co-author of a history of Tulane.

The hurricane could change that. Dr. Cowen says Tulane's new grade school will be open to neighborhood children. And Tulane has offered use of its campuses to New Orleans's historically black Xavier and Dillard universities, which were heavily damaged by Katrina. Tomorrow, Dr. Cowen plans to tour Tulane's campus for the first time since the hurricane, and says he invited Dillard's president to join him.

Some of the school's losses will be permanent and profound, like the 33 years worth of blood samples collected as part of a research project into adolescent heart disease called the Bogalusa Heart Study that were "cooked" when power to the freezers holding them failed. Like everything else in New Orleans, Tulane will start over with a few things salvaged, pain for the lost, and the challenge of coming up with a whole new way of doing things.

New Book on RFID: Bruce Sterling preface too!

The new book Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with RFID is out.

Bruce Sterling from the foreword (or is it a preface?):

It's like watching Big Brother come home and get a rolling pin broken over his head by Mrs. Big Brother, who knows that, even though he thinks he's everybody's daddy, he's a stalker, and a voyeur, and a crook, and a cheat, and a drunk on his own ego, and a handwashing, sniveling deadbeat who out to be ashamed of himself.'

This tome ought to liven things up a bit just as the biggest players are getting ready to make their play.

Note: it is not at all clear to me why Amazon offers me special pricing if I purchase this book along with The Nephilim and the Pyramid of the Apocaplypse . . . perhaps Amazon applies its "raving loon" algorithm to books about RFID, since several of the recent ones appear to link the chips with the Mark of the Beast, etc.

US Gov't says "conserve energy"

Link: The Oil Drum | A Community Discussion about Peak Oil.

The Oil Drum posts the entirety of a USA Today article covering the new plan for energy security. In a nutshell -- "conserve today, and it will all be okey-dokey in 6 months."

Not quite as much fun as Jon Stewart announcing "the Apocalypse is upon us!" in response to W's spitting out the word's "use less ... be better conservers..." (watch at this page and click on "Oil or Nothing." (Warning -- you have to watch an Army recruiting ad -- oh, the irony!)

Avian flu update: 'World as we know it' may be at stake

Link: CANOE -- CNEWS - Canada: 'World as we know it' may be at stake: UN pandemic czar.

A flu pandemic could fundamentally alter the world as we know it, warns the public health veteran charged with co-ordinating UN planning for and response to the threat.

That pretty much sums it up... and that's the guy in charge.

High Oil Prices Met With Anger Worldwide

Link: High Oil Prices Met With Anger Worldwide.

Does "anger" have an effect on prices? If so, how? And are the measures mentioned in the article -- price freezes, tax cuts -- sustainable? What's the next political move? Business move? Technological move? For whom does this create opportunities and dangers?