this may be a bit of an odd question (influenza)

[vindemiatrix]

Does anyone know anything about killer influenza pandemics and how one would go about finding a vaccine to one of them? The novel is set in a futuristic setting, and I have a very small lab crew devoted to the study of killer strains of flu which happen to be cropping up in certain places all over the world at this time. I need to know somehow how they would go about studying them and how they would devise vaccines. Because it's set in the future, a lot's done by machines and computers I guess, but I need there to be humans involved too...

I can't see myself getting any help with this, as it's a bit of an odd topic, but if anyone has even the smallest piece of infomation that would be great, or even ideas on how to research such a thing...

[Walkercarla]

There was a case of an epidemic of deadly flu after the first world war which I think occurred in both Europe and America,if you research that you might gather some information on how it spreads etc. It's known as Spanish flu among other things and started around 1917.
Other than that could your epidemic be similar to the threat of chicken flu,its more modern so that might be more helpful.
For ways of studying it, if groups of people are immune to it they might look to find a common link between them, they could have been exposed to a lesser strain which could be used as a vaccine like cowpox was for smallpox.
Don't know if thats any help. :?

[vindemiatrix]

Some of that was a great help - people who seemed immune or more resistant to the flu, that's a good idea, thanks for that. I forgot about how cowpox was used as a smallpox vaccine, too. Got to be something in there.

Anyone else?

[Aquamonet]

The nature of flu is that it wouldn't work in the way of chicken pox it is continuously changing so it is hard to vaccinate against it. I'm guessing that a way to study it is to look at the way it changes within someone/things body, you're looking at labmice again, trying different ways of controlling it and seeing how it reacts and changes would help people to keep one step ahead. That's my guess from a somewhat simple medical knowledge. I suggest you look at things about vaccines for chicken flu and other such viruses.

[Tundra]

Sorry, i could only think about that one during the world war... I don't know how they got rid of it.

[vindemiatrix]

The nature of flu is that it wouldn't work in the way of chicken pox it is continuously changing so it is hard to vaccinate against it. I'm guessing that a way to study it is to look at the way it changes within someone/things body, you're looking at labmice again, trying different ways of controlling it and seeing how it reacts and changes would help people to keep one step ahead. That's my guess from a somewhat simple medical knowledge. I suggest you look at things about vaccines for chicken flu and other such viruses.

Knew the first part already, my dear - I did do my research on flu, at least as far as Wikipedia would let me. *grin* But do you think they'd still be using lab mice, say, seventy-five years in the future? Would it be possible to do it with computer simulations? Although having mice would be kind of cute...

Anyway, thanks for that, that helped... especially that "trying different ways of controlling it and seeing how it reacts and changes" part. ^_^ Anyone else?

[Aquamonet]

Computer simulations would work. They already do that now cause it's one of the arguements against the need for animal testing. Of course at the moment it has it's limitations but these would probably have been got rid of in the future.

[snooze]

My history teacher once showed us a graph of worldwide human deaths per year over the course of the last century, and there waas this huge spike right near the beginning. Of course, when he asked us what we thought it was, we all chirped WW1, and then he went on to explain about the Spanish flu epidemic. This was interesting because up until this point, I'd never heard of it, and wondered why this huge number of widespread deaths was not addressed earlier in my public education. I then recalled seeing a movie once that took place during the Depression, and an orphan girl describes how both her parents died of "the fever." At the time I was clueless, so after the history lesson I worked it out and it all began to make sense.