New light shed on Spanish flu
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
Scientists who tested monkeys with the resurrected 1918 killer flu virus have a better idea of how the deadliest epidemic in history attacked and killed so many people -- by over-amping the victims’ immune systems.
The findings help explain why so many of the roughly 50 million who died in the Spanish flu pandemic were young and healthy, Wisconsin researchers reported Friday in the journal Science. The human victims’ strong immune systems probably were overstimulated, causing their lungs to rapidly fill with fluid -- essentially drowning them.
