swine flu is flu revisited from 1918??

Just finished watching a repeat of a documentary on PBS that aired about 2 years
ago, talking about the flu epidemic of Spain in 1918. They seem to have
narrowed the place it originated down to a military camp in 1915 in a small town
in France. There it had all of the elements one of the virologists said it
needed that would work together to create the virus: the presence of swine, the
presence of birds (chickens), and horribly cramped quarters full of humans.

One of the scientists talked about the records of doctors who studied and
documented the epidemic. Towards the end of the program, one of the scientists
said he felt compelled to "bring the virus back to life" and do animal studies
to try and understand it better. And then he proceeded to it if I got it
straight. My mind began to wander at that point.

As I was listening, like a jack hammer pounding on the back of my brain, was
uncomfortable fear thinking about a book I read 20-some years ago, by Richard
Addams, called, _The Plague Dogs_, which was about two dogs in an experimental
research lab that have been injected with a horrible plague virus and end up
escaping out into the countryside. I also remember vividly a scene in _12
Monkeys_ where a mad scientist willingly turns a lethal virus loose upon the
planet.

Call me paranoid, but this swine flu thing sounds a helluva lot like the
"purulent pneumonia" that struck France in 1918.

rgds,
lisa


From stanford u website:
The Influenza Pandemic of 1918

The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.

(click on link to take you to the stanford u site)