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It seems Pope Francis needs to brush up on his Tertullian!

It has been reported (in The ChristLast Media, I must note) that the current Pope does not like the phrase "lead us not into temptation...

"Let no freedom be allowed to novelty, because it is not fitting that any addition should be made to antiquity. Let not the clear faith and belief of our forefathers be fouled by any muddy admixture." -- Pope Sixtus III

Thursday, September 28, 2006

A little bit of science, a smattering of history...

Roto-Reuters: Scientists uncover why Spanish Flu was so deadly

The 1918 Spanish Flu that killed up to 50 million people worldwide caused a severe immune response which may help to explain why it was so deadly, American scientists said on Wednesday.

The pandemic was one of the worst in recorded history and killed more people than World War I. But researchers did not understand what made it so lethal.

By infecting mice with a reconstructed version of the 1918 virus and monitoring their response, a team of scientists believe they have found some clues to solve the puzzle as well as a possible new way to fight pandemic flu.

"What we think is happening is that the host's inflammatory response is being highly activated by the virus, and that response is making the virus much more damaging to the host," said Dr John Kash, of the University of Washington in Seattle, who headed the research team.

"It is an overblown inflammatory response," he added in an interview, adding that it could have caused a similar immune response in humans.

Kash and his team, whose research is reported online in the journal Nature, believe targeting the patient's immune system response against the infection, as well as the virus itself, could provide a two-pronged attack against pandemic flu.

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First of all, the word is SEX, not GENDER. If you are ever tempted to use the word GENDER, don't. The word is SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! For example: "My sex is male." is correct. "My gender is male." means nothing. Look it up. What kind of sick neo-Puritan nonsense is this? Idiot left-fascists, get your blood-soaked paws off the English language. Hence I am choosing "male" under protest.

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