# 2505
While I was posting last night's blog about the proposed `Big Brother-Style' flu studies in the UK, knocking around in the back of my head was a memory of an earlier story I did on the same subject.
A search this morning turned up this story from 2007, where Helen Branswell of the Canadian Press wrote about the need for challenge studies, where volunteers are purposefully infected with influenza, in order to determine how it is spread.
I only posted the opening paragraphs to Ms. Branswell's excellent reportage, and gave a link.
Unfortunately, that link no longer works.
After some Googling, I've found a viable link. Ms. Branswell is always worth reading, so follow the link to read the entire article.
Making people sick may be only way to trace how influenza spreads
Provided by: The Canadian Press
Written by: HELEN BRANSWELLTORONTO -The mission of medicine is to keep or make people well. But sometimes it takes letting people get sick to figure out how to do that.
Scientists and public health officials are exploring the notion of deliberately exposing healthy volunteers to people sick with influenza to chart how flu spreads from one nose to the next.
The idea isn't being driven by idle curiosity. Finding a way to plug a very fundamental gap in knowledge about this common disease could help cut the number of influenza cases every winter and could save lives during the next flu pandemic.
"It is gobsmacking in a way that we've got to the 21st century and we still don't properly understand how influenza is transmitted," admits Dr. Jonathan Van Tam, an influenza expert with Britain's Health Protection Agency.
Is flu often or even occasionally spread by clouds of aerosolized viruses, which can waft through the air and infect people metres removed from an ill person? Or is it mainly transmitted by viruses contained in sneezed and coughed mucous droplets which travel only short distances before gravity pulls them out of play?
And what of viruses that land on surfaces? A study, presented at a major influenza conference in Toronto in June, suggested flu viruses in mucus could live on bank notes for up to 17 days. But does contact with viruses found on money or bus poles or elevator buttons actually lead to infection? And if so, is it common or rare?
There are plenty of firmly held opinions on these questions but little science to back them. Better proof is badly needed, experts agree.
And some believe studying the questions in human volunteers is the only way to generate that evidence.
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