Professor Oxford, from the Royal London Hospital and a member of the Svalbard team believes investigations shouldn t be concentrated solely on animal sources, a quarter should be looking into human sources. You could argue the same with HIV and chimps. Several months on, the Svalbard samples have gone for analysis to the National Institute for Medical Research in London. Dr Taubenberger is still making progress, his team have three positive cases of the killer flu now. It looks to us that there are a couple of possibilities as to where the haemagluttinin gene could have come from.
Influenza viruses can mix and match their genes.
It was somehow adapted for life in mammals before 1918, unlike H5N1 which was a bird virus. We need to find samples earlier than 1918, so we re looking for case material now. We have a fourth positive case from the summer of 1918 before the lethal cases from the autumn, this might shed some light on the virulence that went from something benign in the summer to something more lethal in the fall. Taubenberger doesn t think that analysis of the haemagluttinin gene can explain the virulence of the influenza because the mutation that makes the bird virus so lethal is not there. Figuring out why it was so lethal is difficult.