What about this idea to defeat bird flue and other similar viruses.

I think if we could make another virus similar to HIV but for birds, which could make its imune system irresiatable for virus infections, in such way that even very weak virus will kill that bird isntantly and will not get any chance to spread.
if possible we should make bird organizm so irresisatnt to viruses that any virus infection could destroy it in matter of minutes. is uppose this couls be done if we could modify bird imune system if that way that in case of any virus infection imune sustem does not fight it but imediately kills the host.

in that way all strong infections will be eliminated imediately with no way to reach human with strong imunne system

A few problems with this.
1. Killing the bird becuase it got the slightest infection would probably end up killing every bird in the world in a matter of months. Not good if you're a bird. Nor for other animals that might eat the dead bird and ingest your new virus.

2. If any of the birds does manage to survive an attack, then you run the risk of producing more powerful viruses, and you're right back where you started.

3. If number 2 on the list did happen, then you run the risk of having your new virus jump to humans or other species, thus causing a worse epidemic than the one you were trying to eradicate.

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That would simply be taking one dangerous virus and replacing it with an even more dangerous one.

Besides, viruses cannot kill anything instantly. They need time to breed inside their host even without an immune system holding them back. Even the fastest-acting virus needs days to do that.

It will also leave birds everywhere vulnerable to every disease, not just viruses dangerous to humans but also ones that aren't, not to mention bacterial, fungal, and protist diseases. It would absolutely decimate all the world's birds, which are central both to many ecosystems and to many peoples' diets. If the disease was too effective it could easily wipe out every bird on the planet.

Edits: oops, beaten to it

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And it's "flu," short for "influenza." "Flue" is a chimney part.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

When I read about bird flue, I was thinking that some wire mesh might prevent it. Then that led me to remember an odd scene from the movie Gremlins.

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But making a living vaccine for birds is not a totally crazy idea. The polio vacine is a live vaccine that an inocculated child can spread to other children and give them immunity. (Of course in very rare instances it back mutates into full blown polio, which isn't good.) It is possible to imagine such a live vaccine being given to birds to prevent them being a vector for diseases that affect humans. Migrating birds generally have spots where they traditionally stop to rest. Food laced with the vaccine could be left for them there.

The bird with the bird flu was stopped by the bird flue changing where the bird flew.

1 This will not happen, viruses will never kill all hosts no matter how vulnerable they are. unfortunately some ovoliution may take place and bird will become resistant to viruses again, no matter what we do
2 If some birds surive they cary very weak hamless viruses.
3 If that engineered virus somehow infect human we can cure it easily because we have all drugs ready.

that othyer will not be dangerous, since we define its propereties, make vaccine, and try to keep is as stable as possible. mainly it should be produced artificaly and spread where birds live. it would be just some kind of genetic modification, not disease. if possible we shoud transfer these genes to the eggs to make integrated into all bird population genes forever.

as about kiling time then yes, virus need tine to breed, but it will not infect anyone until it reaches enough concentration, so all we need to care to kill bird as soon as possible when it is infected.

also we need to design clever kiling mechanizm, to avoid to much accidental deaths. for examle what if imunity system will try to beat infection for some time, and in case of too high concentration it will start killing all cells around?
also there are many other ways. for example stop brain functions in case of infection so it could not move and spread it.

I got a bird in my flue once. It rattled for hours. Got out alive though.

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I fixed the title for you.

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Digix may I first suggest running your posts through a spell and grammer checker? not meaning any disrespect, especially if english is not your first language but I'm finding it a bit hard to understand what you're saying at times and just putting it through Microsoft Word's (or equivalent if you don't use windows) spellchecker would go a long way towards making it easier to understand.

Secondly why wouldn't creatures with a suppressed immune system end up dead? if you look at what happens to people with e.g. AIDS even a common cold can make them seriously ill, they also end up showing a predisposition towards certain cancers, your immune system is constantly active, the fact that you don't notice it is a testament to just how well it works but if you take it away people can get very severely ill even from very "minor" infections, maek no mistake about it having no immune system is a killer due to opportunstic infections.

Thirdly I think you over-estimate our current ability to modify genomes, we sill only have relatively crude abilities to modify genes and I'm not entirel sure the idea you suggest would even be possible.

Fourthly once a virus is out in the wild its out there and will mutate there's no "putting the toothpaste back in the tube" so the actions of a virus once it gets out into a wild population are somewhat unpredictable at best.

I've been trying to track down survival times for humans with Severe Combined Immune Deficency (SCID) to use as an example but its proving fairly difficult, but I have managed to gather that children with congenital SCID become symptomatic in the space of only a few months with numerous life threataning conditions ( source), what you're proposing is something that would have a similar effect on poultry, anything that became symptomatic with you're hypothetical virus would be dead in the space of months, this would completely wipe out populations of birds regardless of the presence of Avian flu in the population, and to put it mildly AIDS is bad enough, the last thing we would need would be for this "new virus" to make the species jump and we really don't have the drugs to treat something like that, we have medications for AIDS but they work because they are designed around the AIDS virus, particular cell surface marker proteins that the AIDS virus binds to, if the virus were to make the speces jump there is no telling which proteins it would use since it would transfer due to random mutation, we'd be at square one with, given the way you're proposing to distribute it, an inhalation transmitted AIDS virus, something I pray I never see happen.

I've just noticed you're suggesting that rather than a disease you're proposing population wide genetic modification presumably at the germline (I think that's the right word, so that its passed on hereditarily), now that would be quite a trick, bird populations are big and understand that the only way at present we can do is by either infection with a virus containng the genes(in which case see my earlier points) or I believe there was some work on using gold pellets and so forth but they are all in the experimental stages and are mostly designed around modifying one organisms genetic code rather than doing a population wide alteration, the technology to do what you are suggesting does not yet exist, nor for the reasons mentioned earlier is it hugely desirable.

Edited to switch "you're" for "your" where appropriate (with thanks to Gillianren for pointing it out), I think I caught them all but no promises on that and also various spelling errors

A live vaccine is very different than a genetically-engineered virus, though--one is possible with current technology; the other is not. (Oh, and fair's fair--Infinity Watcher, you used "you're" instead of "your" consistently through your post.)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

The outcomes of a Bird flu pandemics are nothing compared to the effects of a mass killing of birds, which are central to most ecosystems.

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Thanks for pointing it out I'll correct it momentarily, I seem to have been doing that a lot recently for some reason, in my defence I am only awake on the balance of probabilities at the moment so I'm verging on the incoherent, I blame Skitt's Law, I really did mean it just as a suggestion to aid in putting ideas across, since I think Digix has some ideas that are well worth thinking about even if I don't agree as to whether they're a good idea or not (I'm probably preaching to the choir here) but if people have to struggle to read his posts Digix's posts might not get as much attention as they probably deserve.

What I say is not final soliution. However that idea came to me after I saw one tv show about diseases. Some scientists say that one of the reason of more agresive diseases is advancement in drugs, because that is how evoliution works.
For example some speculate that smallpox was protecting us from HIV because it kills imediately anyone who is infected with HIV (even smalpox vacine kills HIV infected person) so that ill person wont have chance to live 5 years and infect too many.
so when we got rid of smallpox we enabled HIV to spread.

so my idea is to controll instead of fighting.
also another idea is just to engineer known replacement viruses and replacement parasites and maibe even some bugs to harm genetic pool of natural parasites or harmfull bugs.
There was such similar idea used to sterilize with radiation some harmfull male bugs so female bugs produce defected eggs.

Well, that could be a good idea. Biologic control is a reality with insects. You irradiate the larvae with cobalt to disassemble the chromossomes, and then release the adults in the wild to couple with sound individuals. The offspring will be sterile so you´ll have a controlled population. Maybe something analogous could be done to birds, but there might be dangers involved, since the reproduction rate of birds are some orders of magnitude lower than that of the insects.

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"As truth is gathered, I rearrange,
Inside out, outside in - Perpetual change." - A British rock band

we dont need controll bird polulation in that way, except maibe pigeons.
but what I said before was to make evoliution to turn back. if the strongest always surrive it makes competition between birds and viruses, and we also suffer from side effects of that battle.
animals and viruses came long way to reach todays virulence and imunity. since we cant alter viruses in any way, we can target their hosts.
both sides will try to keep balance and viruses should degrade too.

Of course simple brutal ways will not give good results, thats why i suggest to think about some more sophisticated way to perform reverse evoliution of viruses.

That assumes, incorrectly, that there is a "forward" or "reverse" to evolution.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I had a flu for awhile now, it affect by some kinds of virus but not bird flu.

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