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Bad Craziness Watch: Alex Jones Pushing Swine Flu Conspiracy

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Last Mohican4/25/2009 6:42:04 pm PDT

Good evening everyone. I only glossed over all the previous comments in this thread, so I apologize if this has already been said. However, as one of LGF’s resident doctor-lizards, I’d like to address the main point of that ridiculous InfoWars article:

Questions about the source of the outbreak are also being asked after a public health official said that the virus was “cultured in a laboratory”.

“This strain of swine influenza that’s been cultured in a laboratoryis something that’s not been seen anywhere actually in the United States and the world, so this is actually a new strain of influenza that’s been identified,” said Dr. John Carlo, Dallas Co. Medical Director.

Was this a slip-up or an admission that this new super-strain of swine influenza was deliberately cultured in a laboratory and released?

It’s not a slip-up or an admission of anything, except that the laboratory was doing its job. To culture a virus (or a bacterium, mycobacterium, fungus, etc.) just means to capture a microorganism from an infected host, and grow the microorganism in the laboratory. For example, if your doctor thinks you have a strep throat, he or she will do a throat culture, i.e. swab your throat, stick the swab in a bacterium-friendly medium, and try to culture the Streptococcus bacterium. If a doctor thinks you have pneumonia or a urinary tract infection, he or she will do a sputum or urine culture, respectively, to see if some bad bacterium is growing in there. If it is, the lab will then subject the cultured organism to various antibiotics, to see which ones will kill it, and should therefore be administered to you.

The fact that this virus was “cultured in the laboratory” just means that they found it in a person, and then managed to isolate it and grow it in the lab, so that they can study it more, see what drugs help to kill it, try to make a vaccine, etc. There’s no story here whatsoever.