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CBS News
20-04-2025
- Health
- CBS News
As bird flu hits cattle herds in U.S., scientists say these H5N1 factors worry them most
As the H5N1 bird flu virus mutates and rapidly spreads through American cattle herds — a first for the U.S. — doctors and veterinarians are fearful that if the virus is left unchecked, it could spiral into a possible pandemic Avian influenza is constantly changing. Every new infection increases the odds bird flu could potentially become more deadly or easily transmissible between humans, infectious disease expert Dr. Kamran Khan warns. Today, the virus does not spread person to person, but Khan warns that could change. His company BlueDot was among the first to flag the virus in China that led to the COVID pandemic. Khan said bird flu is just as concerning. Khan said he wants people to know "this is a very serious threat to humanity" and that the longer bird flu is left to spread, "the greater the risks are going to be." "We are really at risk of this virus evolving into one that has pandemic potential," Khan said. "And the reality is none of us know whether this is next week, or next year, or never. I don't think it's never. But it may be here far sooner than any of us would like." Bird flu has circled the globe for decades, but the discovery last year that the deadly pathogen had jumped from a wild bird to a cow upped the stakes. This outbreak has decimated poultry flocks since 2022. Bird flu is so lethal in poultry that more than 160 million birds have been killed during this outbreak, driving egg prices sky high. The first bird flu detected in cattle was in early 2024. Cows were suffering from a mysterious disease: their fevers spiked, their milk dried up, they were coughing, drooling, and lethargic. Soon, there were more sick cattle in neighboring states. Colorado veterinarian Dr. Kay Russo joined a conference call of worried vets from several states to try to figure out what was going on. She said she learned birds on Texas farms had also died, that cats were demonstrating neurologic symptoms and that workers were complaining of flu-like symptoms. Tests confirmed Russo's worst fears: H5N1 had jumped to cattle for the first time. It's not clear how bird flu is spread from cow to cow, but milking equipment is a prime suspect. The virus is thought to linger on the auto-milker waiting for the next cow. The virus has continued to rip through America's dairy herds and poultry flocks, and it's jumped to other mammals, including humans. Seventy Americans have caught the virus, with one death reported – in Louisiana in January – in someone who had underlying health conditions. Workers in milking parlors are among those who have fallen sick. All but two states reported bird flu infections in either cattle, poultry or people between March 2024 and February 2025. There is also a new strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus, called D1.1, which has been discovered in cattle. It can lead to more severe disease in some people. In past outbreaks of H5N1 around the world, bird flu has often been deadly. Despite the urgency, Russo and other vets said the Biden administration was slow to act. It was a month before the U.S. Department of Agriculture required cows to be tested before interstate travel, and 10 months before a raw milk testing program was launched. Today, some states test weekly, some hardly at all. "At present, we're given a stick, and they put a blindfold on us, and we're sent into a gunfight and we're losing. We are losing," Russo said. Russo, who is most concerned by the pandemic potential of the virus, warned that the U.S. is running out of time to stop bird flu. She told 60 Minutes her fears about a possible pandemic are the worst case scenario, but at the moment the virus has the upper hand. Russo says the U.S. hasn't done enough testing of animals or humans to know how the virus is spreading. "I think it's a numbers game, and the more we let it move unchecked, the more likely we're gonna have even a bigger mess on our hands," Russo said. Bird flu has spread to over 1,000 dairy herds across the country. It has also jumped to dozens of other mammals — a rapid and unprecedented spread, infectious disease physician Khan said. "And it's showing us that the virus is capable of adaptation. If you allow it, it will just get better and better at infecting other mammals, including potentially humans," Khan said. Most of the confirmed cases among people in the U.S. have been farmworkers, who have largely had mild symptoms. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the virus still poses a low risk to the general public. But Khan said every new infection increases the odds that bird flu could mutate and lead to more severe disease. In North America, six people have ended up in hospital with bird flu since March 2024. More worrying, five people had no known exposure to sick animals. Virologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen said she's alarmed by the way bird flu is jumping to more mammals; every new spillover gives the virus another chance to evolve and possibly start spreading from person to person. There have been cases in foxes, goats, pigs, rats , cats and raccoons. "The fact that this virus can infect so many different types of mammals is a huge concern in terms of its ability to infect people," Rasmussen said. It's something she admitted she's worried about. "I don't sleep very much these days," Rasmussen said. Many scientists told 60 Minutes that vaccines could be the best defense. There is a vaccine for bird flu, but it has not been licensed by the Food and Drug Administration. Moderna has a new one, but the Trump administration has paused its final funding. There are vaccines for poultry too, but they haven't been used because many of America's trading partners will not import vaccinated birds. The USDA's milk testing program offers a glimmer of hope, said Dr. Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Lab, which is working with the USDA to test raw milk for H5N1. Pasteurization kills the virus, but raw milk can be loaded with it. Forty five states are now doing some form of testing on raw milk from farms. Poulsen said it's helped to slow the spread of bird flu in some states. The CDC is also trying to ramp up its testing, but there's another problem: almost half of farmworkers are undocumented and may be reluctant to be tested. Rasmussen, who was among the scientists given expert briefings by the Biden administration in 2024, said the Biden administration miscalculated the seriousness of the threat. She said the Trump administration is also finding it difficult to get ahead of the virus. Hundreds of federal scientists and health workers, including vaccine and food safety experts, have been laid off by the Trump Administration. Some may be rehired. The CDC declined to answer 60 Minutes' questions, saying only it continues to respond to H5N1. Colorado vet Russo – and others – told 60 Minutes they feel stymied: the current distrust of science and vaccines is hurting their fight to try to prevent the next pandemic. "I would scorch the earth if this ends up in children deaths," Russo said. "And so as a mother, as a veterinarian, as a scientist, I'm just asking you: trust us, because I will do everything in my power and there's plenty of folks behind me that will do the same, to keep this from getting to that point."
Jordan Times
24-03-2025
- Health
- Jordan Times
AI in health and biology
Artificial Intelligence attracted headlines when Chat GPT 4 was released in March 2023. But many interesting developments took place earlier, which helped humanity to deal with critical health problems. Dr Kamran Khan, a professor at the University of Toronto, is the founder of Blue Dot, a company that uses AI to predict infectious diseases. They have developed a platform that tracks 100,000 daily pieces of information in 65 languages from sources ranging from news websites to airline bookings. In December 2019, they tracked a new virus in the Wuhan market in China. They alerted that the virus would spread beyond China. They advised their clients in Canada to avoid the routes going to Wuhan. This was a month before the World Health Organisation proclaimed the Covid emergency. The AI they used is known as 'narrow AI', or a specialised AI system dedicated to a specific problem. It is not a general-purpose AI like Chat GPT. Pfizer and Moderna, two pharmaceutical giants, used narrow AI for vaccine development for Covid-19. The platform used by these companies had been under development for decades. AI helped with analysing protein structures and optimizing candidate vaccines. This made it possible to create the new vaccine. Chat GPT can be used for finding solutions to protracted medical problems for which doctors have no answers. In 2019, Courtney, an American mother found that the growth of her four-year old son, Alex, had stopped. He was in constant pain and had several abnormal tendencies. She visited America's top 17 hospitals including some of the most famous ones. She could not find a remedy for her son. Finally, a few months after Chat GPT 4 was launched in 2023, she uploaded all the detailed medical notes on this AI tool. ChatGPT suggested that Alex's symptoms might be consistent with tethered cord syndrome (TCS), a neurological disorder. In this rare condition, the spinal cord is attached to the spinal canal, restricting its movement, leading to nerve damage and pain. Once the correct diagnosis was made, she could find a neurosurgeon to perform surgery successfully. She now expects her son to live a normal life. I am aware of how AI is being used to find medicines for cancer and Alzheimer's disease. Kit Gallagher, a postgraduate student at Oxford, has found a new method of detecting cancer in its early stage using Artificial Intelligence. He is a mathematician. He has devoted his life to apply mathematics to biology. There are also many other researchers at Oxford University exploring the use of AI to find a cure for cancer. India and other countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America suffer from infectious diseases and rare diseases. They can work together to create AI-powered tools that identify diseases early and predict their spread, helping to save millions of lives. They can establish shared data centres and joint research centres. They can help the growth of hundreds of companies like the Blue Dot company in Toronto. While using AI for a healthy future for half of the world's people, it is necessary to be aware of the dangers of AI if proper care is not taken. A model developed by Demis Hassabis was able to predict 200 million protein structures, making it possible to develop medicines to treat diseases in an early stage. An advanced model developed by his company, known as Alfa-Fold 3, is even more efficient in helping companies to develop drugs. AI can construct new drug molecules. Moreover, AI can structure new chemicals which do not exist in nature. AI can also make infections very deadly. A rogue scientist can cause havoc by misusing AI. Some AI models can even do it themselves, without human instruction. We should be careful that while AI can help stop the spread of diseases, it can also create new, deadlier ones. The biggest danger from AI is that it can create new pathogens. In 2022, a company in North Carolina in the United States instructed AI to produce dangerous toxic molecules. Within six hours, the AI created 40000 dangerous molecules, including the chemical structure for VX nerve agent, the deadliest chemical weapon ever made. The AI also structured dangerous compounds which never existed on the planet before. The company was only performing a scientific experiment. It published its findings in a scientific journal. The experiment is now well known among scientists. And that is why scientists feel scared of AI. They know that AI can detect disease and find medicines which no doctor can. They also know that AI can develop biological weapons which do not exist on the earth. If we take a narrow competitive approach to AI to win the race against other countries, AI will unleash weapons that will harm all countries. Two of the top companies, OpenAI and Anthropic strongly indicated in early 2025 that their new models might enable novices to create biological threats. The only alternative is to collaborate on the global stage to harness AI to make a healthy planet and to prevent its evolution into a monster that will create biological weapons. Sundeep Waslekar is the President of Strategic Foresight Group, an international think tank, and author of A World Without War.
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Sub-freezing temps in NE Kansas put your pipes in danger
TOPEKA (KSNT) — With sub-freezing temperatures still in the air, your pipes are in danger of freezing or even bursting. It is bitterly cold out there, and it will only get worse before it gets better. 27 News spoke with Blue Dot in Topeka who shared the 'do's and don'ts' of what to do when your pipes freeze and how to prevent the potential freeze. Nick Mccart of Blue Dot said there are ways to prevent pipes from freezing. 'Always recommend leaving your cabinets open, like in the kitchen or bathroom, to use especially,' Mccart said. 'Another thing I recommend is running some hot water when always recommend that the more hot water you run to that fixture. The more warmer air you're going to get in those cavities so that come and look at it or fix it or anything like that.' What should you do if you encounter stray animals in the cold in Topeka? Mccart also suggests flushing a toilet that has not been used in a couple of days to keep the water flowing and the thermostat consistently warm. While that may sound simple, we also discussed what you should not do. 'I would not use any open flame to try and defrost any pipes,' Mccart stated. 'It's going to take some time.' It's unfortunate when it happens, but pipes freeze in these cold temperatures. Here's what Mccart recommends about when you should reach out. 'You can do it while it's frozen, which I recommend,' Mccart said. Or you can wait until there's water spraying everywhere. Know where your main water shut-off is and make sure you can get to it. Make sure you know that it works so that you can shut the water off.' For more local news, click here. Keep up with the latest breaking news in northeast Kansas by downloading our mobile app and by signing up for our news email alerts. Sign up for our Storm Track Weather app by clicking here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
