Dissecting flu's deadly weaponry

[rodeodance]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4092709.stm



Monday, 13 December, 2004, 16:15 GMT

Dissecting flu's deadly weaponry

By Rachael Buchanan
BBC News

In a quiet little village in Hampshire there's a very potent reminder of the power influenza can occasionally wield.

Lined up with the characteristic precision of a military cemetery are the graves of 318 Canadian soldiers, who lived and died here in Bramshott during the First World War. .......


But this is not a roll call of war dead; most of these men were victims of the Spanish Flu Pandemic that swept the globe that year.

The Great War slew 15 million in 4 years. Influenza racked up a death toll three times that number in less than a third of the time. .....