Friends,
My good friend Desert Rose found the article concerning the deadly virus that spread from horses to human beings in australia. It was written by Philip Shenon in December 5, 1995 and is below.
I also recalled another viral incident some years ago when a platoon of Brazilian Special Operating Forces (SOF) were training in the jungle when some of them became ill from a strange virus and died.
Troy Rail, 24, an Australian jockey, was
born to race. His father, Vic Rail, was a renowned horse trainer along Australia's sun-soaked Gold
Coast, where thoroughbred racing is a sporting obsession second only to
surfing.
Despite their shared mastery of horse care,
neither father nor son could figure out why the horses in the family's stables
outside Brisbane
were beginning to die.
They wouldn't eat," Troy Rail said.
"That was the first sign that something was wrong -- and then they really
began to suffer." He shuddered at the memory of the animals' tortured
deaths last year. "First they'd get a twitch," he said. "Then
they began to shake, bashing themselves into the wall."
Within days, 14 horses had died, their
lungs filling with so much blood and other fluid that they drowned. And
whatever killed the horses was beginning to kill Vic Rail. The 49-year-old
trainer died a week after he entered the hospital in September 1994, his lungs
dissolving.
Only
a few months before the attention of the world's scientists was drawn to an
outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in the central African country of Zaire last
spring, Australian scientists were scrambling to solve a viral mystery of their
own.
It has turned out to be among the most
ominous medical mysteries in this country's history -- a threat to human lives
as well as to Australia's $2 billion horse racing industry.
After a yearlong investigation that is considered
a model of its kind, Australian scientists have identified the killer, a
cross-species virus related to measles, and believe they know how it was spread
from the horses to Mr. Rail.
But the threat may not have been contained.
Investigators were startled in October when a 35-year-old Australian horse
farmer in Mackay, about 475 miles northwest of here, died after contracting the
virus. Investigators say
it may have lain dormant in his body for several months before killing him.
"There is no sense of panic, but there
is a sense of urgency about this," said Steve Bishop, a spokesman in Brisbane, the capital of the
state of Queensland, for the state Health Ministry. "There is a
desire to determine exactly where this comes from."
The
organism has been identified as a morbillivirus, the viral family that includes
canine distemper and human measles. Equine morbillivirus, as the Australians
called it, is the first member of that virus family to afflict more than one
species.
It
is also the first member of that virus family discovered in humans since
measles were first described nearly 1,000 years ago by the Persian physician
Rhazes.
Dr. Keith Murray, chief of the Australian
Animal Health Laboratory, which first isolated the virus, said investigators
were trapping and taking blood samples from small animals in Queensland to test
a theory about the source of the virus -- that the virus thrives in the bloodstream of small animals and
becomes deadly only when transmitted to horses, humans and other large
creatures.
"Everybody would love to know what the
source is," Dr. Murray said in an interview at the high-security animal
laboratory outside Melbourne, its futuristic autopsy rooms and crematory reachable only through a
series of air locks and bolted steel doors. "If you know what the
source is, you know how to deal with it."
Investigators say the farmer who died this
fall, Mark Preston, may
have been infected when he took part in the autopsy of a horse last year, a
bloody procedure that would have allowed for transmission of the virus.
Mr. Rail, the first victim, apparently
contracted the virus when he force-fed the dying horses in his stables, pushing
his hand down their throats.
"Vic Rail was very dedicated to his
horses and trying desperately to save them," said Chris Baldock, an
epidemiologist who was a member of the scientific team sent to the Rail farm.
"So he was left with scratches all over his arms and hands."
Medical investigators were called to the
stables on Sept. 22, 1994,
and took samples of lung, spleen and blood from horses that had died hours
earlier. Initially, investigators suspected that the horses had died of
poisoning.
But tests on the samples showed that the
cause was a previously unidentified
virus that caused the cells lining the blood vessels of the lungs to clump
together, creating holes in the vessel walls so that fluid leaked into the
lungs.
The Government declared a emergency,
placing horses in other nearby stables under quarantine, and ordered a halt to
racing around Brisbane for several days. Later tests on humans and horses in
the area found no sign of the virus, which had apparently been contained by the
quick action of the investigators.
But the scientists' peace of mind was
shattered this fall with the death of Mr. Preston. Medical investigators have
descended on his farm, performing blood tests on dozens of horses and on Mr.
Preston's neighbors. The farmer's wife, a veterinarian, has tested negative for
the virus.
Mr. Bishop, the ministry spokesman, said,
"We're testing everybody."
Map shows the location of Brisbane,
Australia.
No comments:
Post a Comment