Exhumation of UK diplomat

Plans for exhumation

Nothing has happened yet as a licence from the home office is needed and the permission of the vicar where the body is buried.
Looks as if it could take months - lets hope I am wrong.

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by: elona @ Wed Apr 11, 2007 at 20:03:58 PM UTC

I think permission was granted

at least I know from the church for sure.  But, as you said, these things take time.

They hope to not just get RNA fragments but tissue samples.  John Oxford says sometimes bodies in lead coffins can be remarkably well preserved.  I hope he's right.  In any case, if this succeeds in giving us a virus sequence, it would be a sample from the third wave of the pandemic.  It could tell us a lot about how the virus evolved.



All 'safety concerns' are hypothetical.  If not, they'd be called side effects...

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by: SusanC @ Wed Apr 11, 2007 at 20:21:31 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

time

why does it take time ?
something must be wrong with the system.

BTW. what's with Taubenberger's 1918 first-wave-virus ?

Why don't we hear at least about the reason why we hear nothing ?
Or is even this unwanted to speculate about for some
obscure reason...

Also the time needed before research results are being published
is TOO LONG.
Time can be decisive.
Researchers should keep us uptodate and even publish drafts
and preliminary versions on their webpages.
When they have a heureka-moment, they should tell us immediately !

ask experts for their subjective
panflu death expectation values
and report the replies

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by: gs @ Thu Apr 12, 2007 at 00:45:58 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

you think things happen instantaneously? ;-)

why does it take time ?

Do you have any experience exhuming 90-year old bodies in lead coffins?  Well, neither have I, so none of us know what it takes.

1918 virus - well, what I know is that they found RNA from early 1918, but from these tiny fragments of RNA, they may not always be able to put together enough information to know any sequence.  I guess they are still working on it.  I will post if I hear anything new.



All 'safety concerns' are hypothetical.  If not, they'd be called side effects...

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by: SusanC @ Thu Apr 12, 2007 at 00:53:45 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

priorities

time needed for exhuming depends on importance, priority.
If it were politically important , it could have been done faster,
(and more expensive) I assume.
Also, why didn't they decide earlier to exhume ? H5N1 is being
around for quite some time now.

Tells us something about their priorities.

for 1918-1st wave , partial sequences are fine for now,
just give us what they actually have.

ask experts for their subjective
panflu death expectation values
and report the replies

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by: gs @ Thu Apr 12, 2007 at 01:01:45 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

exhumation

It is just a VERY laborious process that cannot be rushed because of possibilities of contamination during the original interment or during the exhumation or any of several other ways. This contamination (anything other than what was in the corpse and caused its death) can be just from burial preparations (washing, disinfecting) and can all give false positives or negatives. Check out this link:
http://ykalaska.word...
Often we (the public) just see the eurica!! moment without seeing the years or decades of work that led up to it. Of course I want answers today also, but I also want cheap solar energy and thousands of geniuses have been working on that quite a while now...it takes time.

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by: billinfl @ Thu Apr 12, 2007 at 02:48:21 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

researchers

at least, they could tell us how long it is expected to last.

Presumably they could get early samples with small injections
easily, without destroying much.
The problem seems to be that this is somehow disadvantageous
for researchers to report about early incomplete findings.
I assume, they are afraid that others might "steal" the preliminary results
and publish something before the final article appears.

Why else could it be ?  Has someone experience, how researchers think
here, how they build reputation and are rewarded with grants etc. ?

ask experts for their subjective
panflu death expectation values
and report the replies

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by: gs @ Thu Apr 12, 2007 at 02:30:38 AM UTC

[ Parent ]