Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?newsid=59714

If a worldwide flu pandemic like the one in 1918-20 were to strike today
it could kill between 51 and 81 million people, with 96 per cent of
deaths being in poorer countries. This was the conclusion of a US study
led by Professor Chris Murray of the Harvard Initiative for Global
Health.

The study is published in The Lancet.

The researchers used high-quality vital registration data of deaths
occuring at the time of the 1918-20 pandemic. From these figures they
estimated what the likely globaly mortality would be from a flu pandemic
if it happened today.

In a podcast interview, Professor Murray says that the impetus for the
research came from listening to colleagues talk at meetings about what
the death toll from a flu pandemic might be. Estimates ranged from 50 to
100 million to as many as 1 billion deaths worldwide, but nobody had yet
made a systematic attempt to quantify it.

"Dave Fawthrop" hyphenologist.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
news:uehno2ttqninlege6rnoqh1fpoeig7l8q8@4ax.com...

well I never heard a fir tree sneeze so it could be a winner

Actually it was an interesting little article, thanks

Jim Webster

From this weeks issue of New Scientist

http://www.newscientist.com/backpage.ns?id=mg19225832.500

CHRISTMAS trees into Tamiflu - it doesn't quite have the ring of "swords
into ploughshares", but it may save as many lives. That, at least, is what
the Canadian firm Biolyse Pharma of St Catharines, Ontario, is suggesting.

Flu pills from Christmas trees

Tamiflu, aka oseltamivir, is the one drug that works against bird flu, and
governments are hoarding tonnes of it in case of a pandemic. Problem is,
the drug is expensive. The patent-holder, Roche, has said one reason for
this is that the drug has hitherto been made out of a rare molecule found
in a particular variety of star anise from China and... well, the market is
the market.

However, Biolyse says the molecule in question, shikimic acid, can be found
in more or less "anything botanical", especially conifers. Biolyse knows
its conifers, because it boils the cancer drug paclitaxel out of yew trees,
so when the bird flu scare in 2005 drove the price of shikimic acid above
$1000 a kilo it set about locating a ready supply.