Quote (iMMze @ Oct 17 2014 03:14pm)

Any organism with DNA/RNA is capable of mutation. However in Ebola, it has been the same virus we have been dealing with for the past 40 years with no evidence of change and no evidence to support a change for the future.

With mutations you have to keep something in mind, if something mutates it gains something and loses something. The idea that Ebola can become airborne is farfetched for several reasons. The pathology it demonstrates is due to proteins it expresses, that specifically alter cells that the virus is predisposed to. In other words it makes proteins that alter normal physiology in specific cell lines (endothelial cellls, mono/macrophages, and hepatocytes). In these cells the virus releases sGP or eGP (a glycoprotein specific for ebola), which trigger massive cytokine release --> fever, massive inflammation, cell death. Again, this glycoprotein is specific for these cell lines.

In order for the virus to undergo a mutation such as becoming airborne, it would first have to acquire means to target cells in the respiratory tract. It would also have to acquire mutations in its proteins that would allow the virus to alter respiratory tract cellular mechanics to cause the same symptoms it causes in alternate cell lines. Essentially it would have to mutate an entirely new mechanism of entry as well as new mechanism of cell disruption. To keep it in perspective, the odds of this are the same odds of influenza mutating to cause rabies like symptoms.

Actually, the odds of influenza mutating to cause rabies like symptoms is significantly higher than the reverse scenario.
1. due to the amount of people infected with influenza and higher likelihood of mutation.
2. influenza already has a means of targeting respiratory tissue, so it would just need to acquire a new protein to cause rabies like symptoms

The odds of influenza simply acquiring a new protein through random mutation are extremely small. Just some food for thought now and off-topic; what is to stop a bioengineer from encoding the genes for a rabies like glycoprotein in influenza? Something like that is far more likely than the event naturally occurring.

Quote (Thor123422 @ Oct 19 2014 10:44am)

All this is going to do is make it harder to screen people for the disease.  Passengers will reroute to go to other countries and suddenly instead of screening people in hot zones, we're now picking the ones coming from hot zones out of giant crowds and the entire effort fails.

As usual though, Republican fear mongering is going to make a job harder than it needs to be.

Quote (WidowMaKer_MK @ Oct 19 2014 08:29am)

...and of course some Democrats who are at risk of losing their Senate seats have joined the call to initiate a travel ban .

Quote (Mangix @ Oct 19 2014 11:39am)

Yeah after being against it last week, Kay H has now come out in favor of it. I'm assuming they did some polling or something.

Quote (WidowMaKer_MK @ Oct 19 2014 08:49am)

...Obama is close to agreeing on the travel ban...must be a closet Republican .

Quote (IceMage @ Oct 19 2014 10:51am)

I guess now both Fox News, the Republicans, and the Democrats are crazy fear-mongers.

Quote (Thor123422 @ Oct 19 2014 11:53am)

I've been saying that for years.....



You don't say!