quote:

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Experts question cause of Chinese outbreak

By Steve Mitchell
Published 8/5/2005 5:21 PM
WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 (UPI) -- Chinese officials maintain that a mysterious disease in pigs that has also infected and killed humans is an outbreak of swine flu, but the World Health Organization has recommended that further testing be conducted to identify the pathogen more precisely, and at least one U.S. scientist thinks it is possible a strain of Ebola virus could be involved.

The disease, which has occurred predominately in China's Sichuan province, has infected 206 people, of which 38 have died and another 18 are critically ill.

The Chinese Ministry of Health has said the disease is swine flu, which is not actually a flu but an illness caused by the bacteria Streptococcus suis. This disease, however, generally does not cause more than a few cases of human illness and it usually does not cause death in people.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Betray My Secrets:
Friends of Beijing and Washington are our intellectual inferiors.

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Are you referencing the UPI source ¿?¿ That's fine, I probably should have been more selective with my source... but it's been difficult to track the "ebola" claim in other news outlets.

Here's a CCP source (hardly objective, notice the lack of any reference of ebola:

644 pigs killed in swine streptococosis endemic in Sichuan

A Reuters article that doesn't even menetion Sichuan (!), this is getting weird :

Anthrax hits China as pig disease festers
07 Aug 2005 03:04:28 GMT

Considering all the deception the global media got from the PRC during the SARS scare should reason enough for a little suspicion, IMO.

[ 07 August 2005: Message edited by: Panama Jack ]