An overcast and rainy 4th of July, so we are on
the roof deck, overlooking a damp Gotham City.
One bright note - the Red Sox are beating the 
tar out of the Yankees, 6-3 in the 8th.  Go Sox!



Peter, where's the article from which you quote?
Are they talking about Deformed Wing Virus or
"ILPV" ("Ian Lipkin's Pet Virus")?

Regardless of which virus is the subject of the
report, something's amiss here.

> "The mites suppressed other immune responses in the 
> bees, leaving the bees and the colonies more vulnerable 
> to infection."

So, Cox-Foster et al claim that a SUPPRESSED immune response 
is causing the problem, yet their actual data contradicts 
that claim.

Walk through this with me:

> They injected heat-killed E. coli bacteria into virus-infected
> bees that were either infested with bee mites or mite free. 
> The dead bacteria was used to trigger an immune response 

Fair enough, we all know that will work.
Even dead bacteria will certainly trigger an immune system
reaction.

> Surprisingly, they found that the virus in mite-infested 
> bees rapidly increased to extremely high levels when the 
> bee was exposed to the bacteria.

This implies that the virus is being spread by the immune
system reaction itself, just as has been recently found 
to be the case with the measles:

"we've shown that... a virus replicating 
only in immune cells causes measles in monkeys." 
http://pda.physorg.com/lofi-news-virus-measles-epithelium_133236273.html

And, apparently, this little trick can be harnessed for medical purposes:
http://www.mayoclinic.org/news2007-rst/4387.html

So, does this mean that one wants a "suppressed immune response",
in bees, as the artificially-induced immune response SPREAD
THE VIRUS WITHIN THE BEE?

But that is not what Cox-Foster et all seem to want to claim:

> "The virus levels in mite-free bees did not change when the 
> bee was injected with bacteria."

But did the mite-free bees have the same set of viruses
and infection level as the mite-infested bees?

> "The mites suppressed other immune responses in the bees, leaving 
> the bees and the colonies more vulnerable to infection. 

This would make sense, except for the part where the induced
immune reaction over "nothing" directly resulted in a wider-spread 
virus.

So something is very wrong here.
Did anyone read any of this differently?
My brain hurts.

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