Introduction

Table of Contents

West Nile Virus Laboratory Cultures Are Impure (Isolation Not Acheived)

1)

John F. Anderson, the director of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment station in New Haven and the lead author of the study, explained that his group ground up mosquitoes and the brains of dead crows and after several steps eventually filtered out the virus. 

He used a filter of 0.22 micrometers because he wanted to "exclude bacteria and fungi" from the culture. 

The purpose of isolating a virus is to ensure that viral particles are pure and therefore separated from everything else, including possibly harmful materials from the very cells they infect. That way you are reassured that further tests may tap the virus as the likely cause of an illness. 

But was a filter of 0.22 micrometers small enough, given that a West Nile viral particle is said to be 0.04 micrometers, about six times smaller than the filter? In other words, there is enough room for cellular matter to move through the pores along with the West Nile viral particle. That cellular matter could incorporate the biochemical products of other toxic insults, including those from the environment, to the organism. 

"Yes, small molecules can pass through," Anderson admitted, but didn't think this might be a problem of any kind.

2)

"We don't have a purified form of the virus," said Robert McLean matter-of-factly. "Cellular material could interact with the virus to enhance the replication of viral particles." 

What McLean left unsaid was the possibility that the cellular material itself could be sufficiently toxic to cause damage to tissue, with or without the virus. [JW: Thus invalidating WNV/SLE laboratory studies.]

Toxicology Omitted Due To Funding Limitations

1)

‘Dr. Ian Lipkin of Columbia University, who has played an important role in identifying the genetics of the West Nile virus... He too believes that an understanding of disease comes from probing the relationship between environmental factors, including viruses and toxic substances, and the genetic endowment of individuals. 

To Lipkin, it makes perfect sense to want to know more about how, say, "an unhealthy environment might break down immunity in both birds and humans and make them more susceptible to viral infection. It's worthy to pursue this."’

2)

‘"Because we don't have the resources, we're missing the opportunity to look at many different factors that may be going on with West Nile," he [Robert Maclean] said. As director of the Wisconsin-based National Wildlife Health Center of the U.S. Geological Survey, McLean...’

3)

‘"We don't order those tests because there are no funds to do that kind of work," he [Ward Stone, NYSDEC Wildlife Pathologist] said. [para] In fact, Stone couldn't recall anyone in his line of work doing air toxicology tests on birds.’

4)

‘Sean Ahearn, director of Hunter College's Center for the Analysis and Research of Spatial Information, offers another perspective. " I think it is extremely important to factor in air pollution and even MTBE because they may harm the immune system and make it easier for an infection to take hold." [para] Ahearn and his colleagues run a computer project for the City of New York that uses a sophisticated formula to chart clusters of dead birds across the city. Still in its testing phase, it is helping the city to link non-random dead bird clusters to pools of mosquitoes that show signs of the West Nile virus and then to possibly predict where human infection has a high probability of occurring. [para] "The next phase of the project will be to factor in the ecological context, things like air quality and weather," Ahearn said. "I think this is the only logical way to go."’

Note:

JW: I attended the International West Nile Virus Conference in April of 2001 and confirmed that no environmental studies were being done to that date.  A complaint was voiced from the audience by a representative of NOAA, where she stated that no environmental studies had been performed regarding WNV epidemics.

Introduction

Table of Contents