Last summer I was in Berlin for the Fifth International Humboldt Conference. The photo shows the statue of Alexander von Humboldt in front of the univeristy founded by his brother in Wilhelm in 1810. Originally known as the University of Berlin, it was renamed for the famous brothers in 1949 while the institution was part of the Russian sector of the then divided city. It is located in the heart of Berlin on one of its main thoroughfares, just a few blocks from the Brandenburg Gate.

Since Humboldt is the inspiration of this blog, it is well to take the opportunity to describe the famous Prussian scientist. Alexander was born in Berlin on Sept. 14, 1769 to an officer of the staff of Frederick the Great. From an early age the younger of the Humboldt brothers took an interest in science, conducting experiments with electricity and collecting flowers, butterflies and beetles at the family estate at Tegel, 12 miles north of Berlin (site of the present day international airport).

A brilliant, but rebellious student, Alexander found it difficult to find his place in life. He was lucky, however, to have a series of talented tutors who stirred his interest in botany, geology and travel. His college education culminated at the Mining Academy at Freiberg. Here he spent long hours in the pits, studying geology, and, in his free time, teaching himself chemistry and paleontology. Based on his successful completion of this training he was named Assistant Inspector of Mines for Prussia.

It was likely Humboldt's experience as a mine inspector that impressed the Spanish King Carlos IV when they met at the court in Aranjuez in March of 1799. Or perhaps it was Humboldt's title as baron. In any event, it was an exceptional fortune for Alexander, and his French botanist partner, Aimee Bonpland, to be awarded a royal passport to visit the Spanish colonies in the Americas.

The resulting five-year expedition to South America was described by Simón Bolívar as the "scientific discovery" of America. By foot, horseback and canoe, the intrepid explorers would travel over 6,000 miles of territory, much of it previously unexplored. They brought back over 60,000 species of plants, 3,000 of which were new to science. Humboldt's publication of his findings in a series of high quality books on his return to Paris in 1804 would define America for a European public that had no idea of what the New World was really like.

Humboldt's Personal Narrative of his travels would inspire 19th century scientists and writers all over the world. In the United States his writings would become an inspiration for Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Johh Muir. Charles Darwin would write, " I formerly admired Humboldt, now I almost adore him....I shall never forget that my whole course of life is due to having read and re-read as a youth [Humboldt's] Personal Narrative." On a much smaller and personal level, I took Humboldt as a model for my own modest explorations of Central America and Mexico. Interestingly enough, my first position in Latin America was as a science teacher at the Alejandro de Humboldt High School in Ahuachapan, El Salvador.

Influenza Investigation

One of the rewards of this job is the contact it provides with bright minds. Powerful intellects of the future, they are forming the habits of thought and work that will make them successful scholars later in life. It is a privilege to play some small part in their intellectual formation.

As part of our distant learning efforts during the influenza emergency, my colleague, Fleur Montes de Oca, and I assigned a research project based on the unfolding crisis. Students were to keep abreast of the news, maintain a research journal, investigate the nature of viruses and write a report. The flu outbreak allowed students to study a topic in current events from the perspective of the main topics of our seventh grade biology course: microlife, human body organ systems, ecology, genetics and evolution.

It was an opportunity that many students seized and dug into with youthful energy. The fact that it was a national emergency of historical proportions gave the project more urgency. Many discovered links between textbook topics that had never occurred to them before. Science came alive. Whether writing from their homes in Mexico City, or, in one case at least, the beach in Acapulco, the young learners used the internet to delve into the fascinating world of viruses. Their reports are informative, and often insightful. I have linked some of the best.

Here is Alejandra Traslosheros's wonderful research journal.
http://bb.asf.edu.mx/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_599_1&content_id=_59838_1

http://bb.asf.edu.mx/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_599_1

After the Storm

The Dirección General de Epidemiología of the Mexican Health Department (http://www.dgepi.salud.gob.mx/) published encouraging news last Friday. There has been a steady decline in the number of cases of influenza reported and the numbers of deaths recorded since the outbreak started in April. In fact, the mortality rate has dropped to about zero over the last week.

Friday's report listed a total of 4,000 cases of Novel Influenza A (H1N1) in Mexico. Of these cases, only 80 people died, a mortality rate of 2%. World health officials have applauded Mexico's handling of the crisis. It appears that the harsh measures adopted by the government might have kept the virus from spreading and causing more harm.

The public health emergency did reveal some shortcomings in the ability of government officials to evaluate the actual threat and respond accordingly. As World Health Official Ties Boerma, director of health statistics, declared, "What worries us is that the majority of the developing countries don't have an operating system that can determine if the influenza A (H1N1) virus is present."

A first step would be to increase spending for health care and scientific research. While the Mexican economy ranks 13th worldwide according to the World Bank, it is last among the 30 countries of the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development with regard to governmental spending on health care and technological research. Closing down Mexico City cost millions of dollars in lost income. Timely investment in hospitals and hi tech laboratories might have reduced that loss.

A Return to Normalcy?

In a joint news conference yesterday, four government ministers, including Health Secretary José Angel Córdova, announced the relaxing of the influenza alert and a gradual resumption of social activity in Mexico City. Restaurants are permitted to reopen tomorrow. High schools and universities will reopen Thursday, May 7 and K-9 will return to classes the following Monday.

According to Mr. Córdoba, the number of people requesting medical attention for the flu had decreased since April 26. While chilangos will be allowed to emerge from their homes and return to public places, the health alert continues and control measures will stay in place. The next steps to be taken by students and teachers will be spelled out when classes resume.

Since the public health emergency was announced on April 23, there have been 822 laboratory-confirmed cases of the new influenza type A (H1N1) and 29 deaths attributed to this disease nationwide (WHO statistics). The virus has been detected throughout the republic, although the Federal District (Mexico City) had the most cases and the strictest public health measures.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that worldwide there have been 1,490 lab-confirmed cases of this disease in 21 different countries. In the US there have been 403 lab-confirmed cases, and only one death, which triggered the phase 5 pandemic alert announced by the WHO last week. The highest level alert, phase 6, would be declared if there were sustained community-level outbreaks in another region of the world. So far that has not happened.

The above map, taken from the WHO, shows the influenza situation in the Americas. Most cases have been detected in North America, although some possible cases have been reported in Colombia and Brazil. These are more worrisome as the southern hemisphere is entering its winter months that will bring a climate more favorable for the flu virus.

As health officials have warned us, the A/H1N1 virus will not disappear overnight. It will continue to infect isolated individuals in the population for some time to come. In fact the 1918-19 influenza outbreak that caused the so-called Spanish Flu, a strain similar to the current one, attacked in waves. For this reason it is important for us to take good care of ourselves and continue to heed public health measures.

What is a virus?

A virus is basically a nucleic acid (RNA or DNA) wrapped by a protein coat or capsid. Most biologists do not consider them to be alive. Here is a typical definition from Suite 101.com: "Viruses are acellular non-living particles...incapable of carrying out all life processes."

There is some disagreement, however, and it begins with the definition of life itself. The University of Cape Town (South Africa), in its on-line course on the Introduction to Virology, defines an organism as "the unit element of a continuous lineage with an individual evolutionary history." By this definition, viruses can be considered organisms because they do replicate and have a traceable evolutionary history.

Whether considered living or non-living, viruses are efficient parasites of plants and animals. The diagram above, taken from Wikipedia, shows a typical virus replication cycle. It begins with the virus attaching itself to a suitable cell, followed by the injection of the viral genetic material into the cell. Once inside, the virus comandeers the cell's machinery to assemble the building blocks needed to produce new virus particles.

The encoded hereditary information, or genome, inside a virus particle is incredibly diverse, a greater variety of structures than those found in plants, animals or bacteria. In addition, viruses may change their genetic code through mutation, or simple errors in copying the RNA or DNA that make up the virus. They may also "reassort" or swap genetic information with another virus strain to create a new, drug-resistant one. This is what scientists believe happened with the current flu bug affecting Mexico. It is actually a mixture of genetic information from swine, avian and human inluenza viruses.

Given this genetic complexity, the identity of a virus is diffiucult to nail down. Health authorities in Mexico have had to send samples from flu victims to Winnipeg, Manitoba or to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia for confirmation. This is one of the reasons that it has been so difficult to get clear data about the number of people infected with the new virus or the mortality rate it has caused.

In today's press conference, Health Secretary José Angel Córdova announced that Mexico is in the process of establishing six new laboratories that will be able to speed up the identification process. Hopefully, these new resources will be able to give us a clearer picture of the status of the outbreak and the possiblities of resuming a more normal routine next week.

Factory Pig Farms: Culture Media for Viruses

Two articles in today's La Jornada point to one of the possible reasons for the current world public health alert: the way we raise livestock for food. Mike Davis, in "Los cerdos peligrosos usan traje," Dangerous Pigs Wear Suits, points out the problems created by the "transnational industrialization of livestock production." Raised in cramped pens, fed antibiotics and hormones to keep them alive long enough to go to market, pigs have become the perfect culture medium for new strains of drug-resistant virus. According to Davis, in 1965 the US raised 55 million pigs on a million farms. Today it raises 65 million swine in only 65,000 farms, more than half of which contain more than at least 5,000 animals each.

The current crisis was predicted years ago. Davis cites a 2003 Science article by Bernice Wuerthrich that states that "after years of stability, the North American swine flu virus has jumped towards a fast track evolution." In 1998 a North Carolina pig farm was decimated by an outbreak of a particularly virulent strain of the swine flu. For some scientists this event marked the genetic change towards ever more lethal viral strains.

The second La Jornada article of interest today was "Cuna de la influenza patógena," written by Alejandro Nadal. The article traces the viral outbreak in Mexico to a young boy who contracted the disease in the town of La Gloria, near Perote, Veracruz. The boy came down with the disease in March along with 400 others in that mountain village. By April 6 state government authorities had recognized a strange "respiratory disease" and cordoned off the area.

So why might the disease appear in a small village in Mexico's Sierra Madre Oriental? Well, it turns out that the Granjas Carroll, a subsidiary of the transnational Smithfield Foods, has a pig farm in the area. In last night's news conference, Health Secretary José Angel Córdova avoided answering a journalist's question about whether the Perote outbreak was the origin of the disease in Mexico.

A crisis such as the one we are living, is an opportunity for reflection about the way we live. One element that deserves thought is our diet. We tend to take the food on our table for granted without questioning its origin, or the form in which it was produced. An increasing number of authors have suggested that the way we raise our livestock is a danger to our health.

The above photo was taken from Marlerblog, http://www.marlerblog.com/tags/campylobacter/, written by Bill Marler who writes about health issues related to our farming techniques.

For further information, check out this article from El Universal http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/594485.html

Science in the Time of Influenza

April 28, 2009--It has been three days since the World Health Organization declared a worldwide health alert due to the appearance of a new virus in Mexico. While some are calling it "swine flu," others point out that it has genetic information from avian and human flu virsues as well. What makes this outbreak important is that the disease is able to be transmitted from human to human and a vaccine has not yet been devoloped against it.

Schools have been shut down, first in Mexico City and the State of Mexico, now nationwide. Public meetings for entertainment have been canceled. Yesterday the mayor ordered all restaurants and bars to close their doors. Discussions have been held to decide on shutting down the capital city's vast transportation system which transports millions daily. In the absence of a vaccine it is hoped that keeping people at home will shut the virus down.

While this blogspot was designed to comment on natural history in Mexico from a Humboldtonian perspective, this public health emergency is something that would have attracted the Prussian scientist's attention. For what distinguished Humboldt was his awareness of the impact of the environment on people and the need to use science to improve people's lives.

In the next days, I invite my students to offer their opinions, to share information they find important to understanding what is happening. Why are there more mortalities in Mexico than in other countries where the disease has appeared? What is the link with pigs? Why did they become a jumping off point for this new viral strain? How do viruses operate? If they're not alive, how can they evolve?

There are many scientific questions to be asked. Newspapers, television and the interent are now offering a variety of reports that try to help us understand what is going on. If you find an important piece of information, share it here. If you have an opinion about the response to the crisis, post it here. The aim is to provide a forum in which we can learn together about what is happening and try to understand it better.