Dead Seals, Seacoast New Hampshire

Last fall, I wrote about dead seals and birds washing up along the beaches of Hampton, New Hampshire. 

It was a disturbing event, and it felt as if nature were out of whack. The experience conveyed how early man, pre science, must have felt when life in the natural world took a strange, astonishing turn. I could well understand how people without knowledge of organisms smaller than the eye could see, would conjure up other explanations for things--we have offended God, or the gods; we have seen the coming of the end of the world.

But now a report, "Emergence of Fatal Avian Influenza in New England Harbor Seals,"  arrives, a work of a joint effort of the United States Geological Survey, the New England Aquarium, the Columbia University School of Public Health and others, appears.  

Here is the link:

mbio.asm.org/content/3/4/e00166-12

The seals died of a new strain of avian influenza A virus, H3N8. This virus has been seen in birds since 2002 but recently mutated (a D701N mutation--they could  even tell you where in the genetic code the change occurred) and this made the virus able to attach to mammalian respiratory tract cells. The authors remark this mutation has been known to facilitate the leap from bird to mammal, and, of course, human beings are mammals.

So, once again, thanks to the coordinated efforts of local authorities in the towns of Hampton, Rye and Seabrook, who alerted the folks down at Wood's Hole and the federal people, who collected the bodies, sent them down to Massachusetts and samples of lung on to New York.  This is not something we could have done here in New Hampshire.

The Phantom has another blog for political expostulation, but he cannot help but observe this is another example of the value of cooperation, or if you are Rush Limbaugh or a Tea Party true believer (like our current Congressman, Frank Guinta), you would say, "Big Government."  

Oh, the horror. Big Government.

Well, bigness helped here. It was Big Government, but it was Good Government, and if the Tea Party had its way, we would all be back in the 18th century, wearing three cornered hats, keeping our gun at the ready and preaching from the pulpit this calamity occurred because we had offended God by paying taxes to the British.



mbio.asm.org/content/3/4/e00166-12