Z. A. Moose writes:
>>We have all assumed, led by those who claimed to know, that the Black
Death was
>>bubonic plague, and spread by fleas on rats.
>>Some folks (historical forensic epidemiologists?) have recently read
all the
>>contemporary accounts and concluded that
>>the BD was NOT the plague. Onset and symptoms wrong and progress
quite a bit
>>too rapid.
>>Last I noticed, they were unsure what it was, but suspecting a form
of
>>hemorrhagic fever.
Yes, have seen similiar reports. This is not my area but think the
attraction of subverting the dominant paradigm
might be playing a role here. It is curious that the enlarged lymph
nodes tended to cocur higher up than would now as well as the high
incidence
of apparent pneumonic variant.
http://hnn.us/article/10949
The fleas are not all that good vectors as well, but we may have no
clue as to how horrid public health was then or rampant fleas were.
Also very curious that the a genetic variant resulting in a deficiency
in the chemokine receptor CCR5 is very enriched in those resistant to
Plague (church records and genotying descendants of surviors of
families who had only one surviving member who had to be exposed, among
abundance of other data confirms this) produces protection from HIV.
Not really a stretch to hypothesize a flavi VIRUS producing
a hemorrhagic fever given how contagious they can be. I always assumed
the CCR5Delta32 variant just somehow caused protection against a
bacterium (Yersinia Pestis) as well, but no clue how. Genetically
modified mice with the CCR5 knocked out did not confer protection from
YP arguing against YP as the cullprit-Hmmm. But the plot thickens:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15272490
YP DNA is however found in dental pulp from a victum of plague in
France buried in a mass grave:
http://www.pnas.org/content/95/21/12637.full.pdf
This is the proverbial smoking gun. Hard to see how a false positive
could be produced but would like to see confirmation. I don't keep
track of this stuff and confirmation may well exist.
Yes Oswald acted alone and Y. pestis likely caused the Black Death, Mike
--
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
|