European regulators have recommended changes to the product label for GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK.L) pandemic flu vaccine Pandemrix to highlight the potential risk of narcolepsy in children or adolescents. The decision is based on preliminary results of studies from Finland, Sweden and France suggesting a possible link between the vaccine and the rare sleeping disorder. The move does not apply to adults...UPDATE: Press Release from the European Medicines Agency.
Friday, April 15, 2011
EU agency flags narcolepsy risk on GSK flu shot/ Reuters
From Reuters today:
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Ed,
You need to go back to math class. There are about 1 trillion spores per gram (10 to the 12th power. If 0.3% are B. subtilis that makes 3 times 10 to the 9th power (3 billion spores per gram of spores).
With a few spores brought in from somewhere on a shoe or spaceship you might get a few hundred or a few thousand or so after anthrax fermentation, but there simply would not be this many, as it would take too long. You would need too many growth cycles. And the vegetative cells start dying off after a certain number of cycles.
Had the perp started with 1 Bacillus subtilis spore, he would have had only about 300 viable B. anthracis spores to start his fermentation. That is far too little to make a lot of product, and would never be done by a professional because it would require additional fermentations to produce enough product.
Had the perp started with a normal amount of anthrax spores, there would have had to be a large number at the beginning that were B. subtilis.
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