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Health See other Health Articles Title: Doctors: Can't Rule Out Chance of Airborne Ebola Doctors: Can't Rule Out Chance of Airborne Ebola Friday, 17 Oct 2014 08:49 AM By Melanie Batley As President Barack Obama and senior officials try to calm public fears about the risks of contracting Ebola, experts point to an experiment 25 years ago that proved one Ebola strain in monkeys could become airborne, The Washington Times reported. The study in 1989 at a monkey research facility in Reston, Virginia — ultimately brought to life in the Hollywood film, "Hot Zone" — has prompted fresh concerns that today's virus has the potential to mutate into one that could be transmitted by air. "We can never say never, but I just don't think the risk is very high," Thomas Geisbert, professor at the University of Texas at Galveston who co-discovered the Reston strain of Ebola, told the Times. Special: 18.79% Annual Returns . . . for Life? Dr. C.J. Peters, who studied a 1995 outbreak in Congo, said there was some evidence from that study that is it had spread by aerosol transmission. "We just don't have the data to exclude it," Peters, a professor at the University of Texas at Galveston, told the Los Angeles Times. Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, insisted before Congress on Thursday that he was confident Ebola would continue to spread exclusively through bodily fluids. "We don't believe it is spreading in any other way," he told a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, according to the Times. "We are confident this is not airborne transmission." Nevertheless, in a recent interview with CNN, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pondered the possibility that Ebola could be transmitted by air. "I mean if you bring two, you know, two, uh, doctors who happen to have that specialty into a room, one will say, no, there's no way it will ever become airborne, but it could mutate so it would be harder to discover." Latest: Do You Support a Travel Ban on West Africa Nations? Vote Here. Another expert, Dr. David Sanders, professor of biological science at Purdue University, told Fox & Friends on Wednesday that while there is no evidence at the moment that the virus has airborne transmission, there continues to be the possibility that it will mutate even if the risk is low. "Our own research that we published with our collaborators, demonstrates that Ebola has the inherent capacity to enter lung tissue, human lung tissue, just as influenza does," Sanders told Fox News. "I can't put a number on how possible it is, but the most important message is the longer the epidemic goes on, the more cases we have, the more likely it becomes," Sanders said. Meanwhile, Dr. Jane Orient, director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, told Newmax TV on Thursday that she could see the possibility of Ebola being transmitted by air. Specifically, Orient said, the germs could pass via "aerosols" that are created by sneezing or coughing. "Your body fluids have to go through the air, unless you touch somebody," she said. "You generate an aerosol if you cough or sneeze or vomit or have explosive diarrhea — and it makes droplets of different sizes. "The ones that are really, really tiny can get through your mask, around your mask, down into your lungs," Orient said, adding that these droplets could infect "target cells down in your lungs." She added that airborne transmission could not be ruled out. There are, however, experts who are resolute in their determination that the virus will not mutate to become transmitted by air. "Ebola is more-or-less the same as it was in 1976," when it was discovered, Ian Jones, professor of virology at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, told The Wall Street Journal. "Most viruses, once they've established a way of life, stick with it." The Journal noted that there has never been a human virus known to have changed its mode of transmission. Yellow fever, for example, is still transmitted by mosquitoes, and HIV continues to be transmitted only by body fluids. Read Latest Breaking News from http://Newsmax.com www.Newsmax.com/Headline/.../id/601324/#ixzz3GVX5ZU2O Poster Comment: Mutations of viruses happen all the time. The MRSA that has infected my leg has this ability, except it is a bacteria that morphs into another form and is resistant to most anti-biotics. Basically, the anti-biotic kills the cell wall and the bacteria continues to live on. It becomes resistant to the anti-biotic that killed the cell wall. I was using aromatherapy to try to heal it, but I am out of the essential oils and need to get more. It was working fine at one point in time. The sore that was on myh left leg is now healed and the right leg is much smaller. I heard a story about a kid that had a similar infection in his sinuses. The doctors treated it with anti-biotics, which is standard protocol. The sinuses are encased in bone, which makes the anti-biotic unavailable and it does not work. The alternate treatment was to put essential oils into warm water and cause the child to inhale the warm water into the nasal cavities. The junk that came out of his head was unbelievable. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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