So let's take a look at the flu virus.

The swine flu virus, at the moment, is a symmetrical object.

2 Examples include the constantly mutating strains of the Ebola virus and the avian flu.

We talked about before the H and N spikes on the surface of the flu virus.

In this rendering of the flu virus, these different colored spikes are what it uses to infect you.

In some cases, and in fact in most cases in one year, this flu was caused by a new virus to us, or newly identified by us, called Israeli Acute Paralysis virus.

But the interesting thing about these computer virus infections was that, if you look at the rate at which the infection worked, they show this spiky behavior that you're used to from a flu virus.

We're worried because this virus, unlike any other flu we've ever studied, can be transmitted by eating raw meat of the infected animals.

Our big concern at the moment is a virus called H5N1 flu some of you call it bird flu which first emerged in southern China, in the mid 1990s, but we didn't know about it until 1997.

So for instance, a biotechnology company has now found broadly neutralizing antibodies to influenza, as well as a new antibody target on the flu virus.

It mimics what we now understand about reconstructing the 1918 flu virus, the last great pandemic, in that it also jumped directly from birds to people.

Audience member In the 1918 flu I understand that they theorized that there was some attenuation of the virus when it made the leap into humans.

NEW YORK The World Health Organization has now officially declared the H1N1 flu virus to be a global pandemic. Governments, international organizations, and people around the world are rightly focused on fighting it.

Think of cancer, of bird flu, swine flu, SARS.

Just look at pandemics swine flu, bird flu, H1N1.

Why not? Every plant virus, every insect virus, every marine virus.

Bird flu.

The story of interferon, given for one year to patients with hepatitis C virus, is particularly striking. This treatment is very costly (about 50,000) and makes all patients feel quite ill with flu like symptoms and general malaise.

As variable as flu is, HIV makes flu look like the Rock of Gibraltar.

We tried it against flu A viruses H1N1, H3N2 as well as flu B viruses.

That's the sound of genetic mutations of the avian flu becoming a deadly human flu.

Avelile had the virus, she was born with the virus.

Swine Flu for Grownups

I caught the flu.

And that most people who die of regular flu which in regular flu years is about 360,000 people worldwide, most of them senior citizens and they die not of the flu but because the flu gives an assault to their immune system.

We know the virus will mutate. It will be a different virus.

Virus Killer

So this, swine flu pink.

Who Pays for Bird Flu?

Special event on Avian flu

And each spot represents a different family of virus or species of virus.

I was vaccinated against the flu.

Now, there's an enormous variety of tiny, inexpensive sensors on the market, and you can easily imagine someone putting together a phone that could measure temperature, CO2 or methane levels, the presence of some biotoxins potentially, in a few years, maybe even H5N1 avian flu virus.

Luckily, this year's flu was relatively mild.

Well, you could develop flu like symptoms.

And now comes the Spanish flu also.

I've got a touch of the flu.

The virus is defeated.

And a pig disease, a pig virus, and a human virus can both proliferate, and because of their kind of reproduction, they can combine and produce a new virus.

Virus protection and virus development constitute an uneven arms race. A virus can be just a couple hundred lines of computer code, compared to hundreds of thousands of lines for anti virus programs, which must be designed to detect wide classes of enemies.

Seth Berkley HIV and flu the vaccine strategy

So today, we get our flu vaccines from ...

Laurie Garrett on lessons from the 1918 flu

This is not your normal garden variety flu.

Special event on the theme of Avian flu