NY Times: Deadly 1918 Epidemic Linked to Bird Flu, Scientists Say

Deadly 1918 Epidemic Linked to Bird Flu, Scientists Say By GINA KOLATA New York Times Published: October 5, 2005 Two teams of federal and university scientists announced today that they had resurrected the 1918 influenza virus, the cause of one of history's most deadly epidemics, and had found that unlike the viruses that caused more recent flu pandemics of 1957 and 1968, the 1918 virus was actually a bird flu that jumped directly to humans.

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This is very interesting. Previous research suggested that the Spanish Flu was essentially a mammalian virus, although very similar to avian viruses. This is the first evidence to show that the 1918 pandemic was caused by bird flu, apparently the only one out of the last three pandemics.

Damien

UPDATE: The full text of the Nature paper is online here