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H5N1 is the jackpot for any doom prophet. I sort of like the “H5N1 doesn’t read press releases” comment. Would we expect less from the land of fuzzy science. Unfortunately, all this will be trivial post pandemic. l
Well, December 24 is coming up, Henry Niman's date for "shock and awe" — explained here: [defunct link]
I saw something re this “Shock and Awe” (to be in a patent application it seems). Seem to remember Niman promising a different arrival of Shock and Awe a while back, with nothing much happening.
Given date, are we to expect the Shock and Awe to arrive in a big sack carried by a chap in a red suit with a big white beard?Though Planet Niman is well into the human H5N1 pandemic that began by 6 April 2005 , I doubt most of us will be shocked or awed on or after 24 Dec.
But, can forecast Niman will produce loads more Bluff and Bluster.schlock and awful comes to mind
Hope you have a Merry Xmas or whatever politically correct season you follow. :laugh:So whats your solution. I suppose its all Bush’s fault. typical liberal rag.
George W Bush, u mean – that patsy now getting touchy feely about poor kids, and even a little worried about overusing oil? Brits like me may not so much blame, as feel just a little pity.
Post edited by: martin, at: 2006/02/07 12:16
This is the new site for Niman's commentary links: flutrackers.
We DARE any of you to show your conservationist faces there and debate us. We will own you. Death to all birds! [post by Lisa, soon in thread, says this isn't Disaster Boy]
Hooray – a home for Nimanists!
Here’s hoping there’s no sunshine there, so trolls will continue having fun.
Good luck chaps!
DB (Disaster Boy) wrote:
Quote:This is the new site for Niman's commentary links: flutrackersWe DARE any of you to show your conservationist faces there and debate us. We will own you. Death to all birds!
I think this post is either a joke or an imposter. It doesn't reflect any of the educational postings I saw on on that site, nor the tone of the discussions. I think the post can be ignored.
DB (Disaster Boy) wrote:
Quote:This is the new site for Niman's commentary links: flutrackersWe DARE any of you to show your conservationist faces there and debate us. We will own you. Death to all birds!
Disaster Boy is actually very nice and did not say that comment. Someone is trying to sabotage the new CNN of bird flu site.
AVIAN FLU: PREVENTING A PANDEMIC A Bird Flu Watcher Develops A Following Through the Internet
By NICHOLAS ZAMISKA
March 23, 2006 11:07 p.m.; Page B1 Henry L. Niman is a sort of macabre bird watcher, trailing the deaths of chickens, ducks and pigeons late at night by the glow of a computer monitor in the office of his suburban Pittsburgh home. There, the 57-year-old biochemist keeps vigil over a blog and an explosion of offshoot Internet discussion groups tracking the avian flu virus across the world. Dr. Niman sleeps "a few hours here and there," living partly on dwindling savings from previous research jobs. He recently shifted his schedule toward the Asian time zones to keep up with the fast-moving bird flu developments in the region.
While he hasn't published a peer-reviewed paper since the mid-1990s, Dr. Niman says that he hopes his time trolling the Web "will pave the way for rapid acceptance" by the scientific community of his theories about how the virus is evolving. On Web message boards he has been called everything from "a Churchill of our times" to a "gonzo scientist."
But in the World Wide Web of bird flu addicts, Dr. Niman is famous. PREVENTING A PANDEMIC 1 • See an FAQ on avian flu2, an interactive global map3 and track the latest developments in the Avian Flu News Tracker4. • Plus, see complete coverage5. As a global team of top scientists stalks the avian influenza virus in hopes of staving off a human pandemic, a parallel universe of nonprofessional laptop sleuths — fostered in part by Dr. Niman's many Web postings — is racing to beat them at their own game.
These amateur detectives are supercharged by a mix of conviction, fear, distrust of authority, and old-fashioned competitive spirit. They believe mainstream scientists are missing important clues about the virus's evolution — and that's why ordinary citizens have to take the lead. So they are scanning news reports from various countries trying to figure out how the virus is mutating and whether there have been clusters of bird flu cases in humans.
Such a grouping could indicate the beginning of a pandemic since the virus would be spreading from person to person. "I'm just a housewife, but I've been obsessed with this," says a 49-year-old mother of two daughters from outside Hershey, Pa. She asked not to be identified by name so her neighbors wouldn't think she was "goofy." She started following bird flu on the Internet a little over a year ago, when she was researching the proper dosage of a flu medication for her daughters. She has spent hours each day tracking the latest developments on the Web. She has theorized that India will spark the pandemic. "I know it's strange, and I know it's not normal, but I just can't seem to break away from it," this woman says.
Dr. Niman hasn't formally recruited any of his followers; he doesn't direct their research and he certainly doesn't issue orders. His relationship with his acolytes is informal and even a bit distant. He posts commentary about bird flu on his company's Web site, and frequently contributes to various bird flu discussion groups. The amateurs take it from there. "It has brought together a fairly diverse group," Dr. Niman says of his Web postings. "These are people who just became more concerned about what is going on."
The Internet is infamous for fostering obsessions and pseudo-science of all kinds. But the prospect of a bird flu pandemic has an apocalyptic quality that can quickly breed fear and distrust. H5N1, the strain of avian influenza that worries health experts the most, has killed millions of birds across Asia and has now spread into Europe and Africa. The virus can pass from birds to humans through close contact, but some scientists warn that a single mutation could make it readily transmissible among people as well, killing millions around the world in a matter of months.
That even the professional bird flu experts are sometimes reduced to conjecture spurs still more second-guessing among Dr. Niman's troops. It also highlights what some see as the import of Dr. Niman's mission. Dr. Niman is "a natural-born celebrity, brilliant but weird," someone going by the name Montanan writes of Dr. Niman on a bird flu blog. "And he is emerging as a 'blog star.' Whether you love him, hate him or are neutral, you can't ignore him." Dr. Niman first turned his attention to bird flu in 2003, and has since joined curevents.com, one of several sites with bird flu discussion groups. The activity on such sites has surged in recent months. The forum had 8,361 discussion "threads" and 116,014 posts as of yesterday. "Go after them NIMAN! damn I am sick and tired of the run around about H2H!" a bird flu blogger with the screen name monkeyeyes2 wrote on a similar site, referring to the World Health Organization's attention to the possibility of broad human-to-human infection. Since graduating from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles with a doctorate in biochemistry, Dr. Niman has had several jobs in the sciences, the last of which was a research job at Shriners Burn Center in Boston, where he was also affiliated with Harvard Medical School. He says he left to found his own business, Recombinomics Inc., in the hope of eventually developing vaccines.
He has raised around $75,000 from a couple of investors so far, he says. "Right now it's mostly me and the patent attorneys," he says of his company, adding that he is trying to secure some laboratory space in Baltimore. So far Dr. Niman's company hasn't made any bird flu vaccines, but it has filed for patents on a method he thinks could work. The idea is to try to predict the ways in which a virus will mutate. Since part of the problem with seasonal influenza is that the virus changes every year, scientists have to wait until a strain emerges before they can make a vaccine. Dr. Niman thinks flu viruses are swapping chunks of genetic material with one another when they infect the same host, spawning mutant strains of the virus. He thinks he can forecast what a new strain will look like because different viral strains, he says, exchange genetic information in predictable ways. Theoretically, this method could be used to develop a vaccine for a rapidly evolving virus, he says.
He is pushing his theory relentlessly on the Web, and is trying to win followers who support so-called recombination, and thus generate business for his start-up vaccine company. Meanwhile, Dr. Niman has forced at least some mainstream scientists to take a look at his ideas. He has suggested a theory about pig influenza viruses in South Korea that the World Health Organization felt compelled to look into, at Dr. Niman's constant urging, lest it miss an important clue. But Klaus Stöhr, a bird flu expert at the WHO, calls the Niman leads "far-fetched," saying this was putting it "diplomatically." And last March, the prominent journal Science wrote an article about the claims, titled "Experts Dismiss Pig Flu Scare as Nonsense." A map on Dr. Niman's Web site tracks bird flu's spread across the world. At numerous points in the complex evolution of the bird flu virus, Dr. Niman has said that human-to-human transmission has occurred, suggesting that a pandemic was around the corner. In February of last year, Dr. Niman wrote: "The flu pandemic of 2005 has clearly begun." He said in a recent telephone interview that "'begun' didn't mean that people were going to be dropping dead, but that we had moved to another phase, that it was more efficiently transmitted." "Niman pours forth a veritable stream-of-consciousness series of commentaries, taking news tidbits from here and there and concocting some truths, and a generous helping of pure baloney," wrote Martin Williams, of Hong Kong, on his blog that covers H5N1.
"He's just prolific," Dr. Williams said later in a phone conversation. "It's just scaremongering. People like to read it and get excited."
"That's utter nonsense," Dr. Niman says in response, adding that the criticism stems from a disagreement the two had over whether migratory birds are responsible for the spread of the virus around the world. Dr. Niman says he's not bothered by his critics. "They don't really argue the science," he says. "They basically do personal attacks." Dr. Niman's Internet shock troops have adopted a division of labor, organizing themselves into groups dedicated to translating Chinese news reports and responsible for illustrating the spread of the disease across Asia with sophisticated maps.
For example, Gaudia Ray Sarna, of Ojai, Calif., a Stanford law school graduate, claims to have done "the first academic analysis of the Old Testament's Tenth Plague," describing the plague "and the facts of pandemic flu as we know them now, from 1918 and from London 1665." The study is titled "Why smear blood on the doorposts?"
And a British flu watcher emailed Dr. Niman to alert him to several species of dead birds piling up outside the Briton's house, as well as a dead fox in a pile of magpies. "I find the reactions he gets and the intensity of scrutiny we give him most entertaining," writes the blogger Montanan. "He is both a scientist and a dramatist. And we definitely are a willing audience."
Quote:They don’t really argue the science– maybe because there is little or no science to argue
as to Gaudia-Ray’s bizarre notions, this from a correspondent:
Oh – I didn’t know the Great Plague of London (typical rat, rat-flea, and human flea-borne plague) was REALLY flu! Or the tenth plague in the Bible – a flu which killed only first-born sons. Oh. Those were the ones sent out to kill the chickens?Still, claptrap clearly has much appeal, to certain people.
cf, say, Erich von Daniken‘s popularity with some regular folk, but not scientists. (Wikipedia entry for von D includes “Most historians regard von Däniken’s archaeological claims as pseudoscience, and are of the opinion that he is drawing far-reaching conclusions from little evidence and is disregarding more likely alternative hypotheses, but a large group of followers, some of whom have written books of their own, are of the opinion that his theories are likely to be true.”)Post edited by: martin, at: 2006/03/25 03:22
Hilarious to see that Niman readily commented on news report suggesting H5N1 found in two penguins in Antarctic:
Quote:The above comments suggest penguins in Antarctica are fatally infected with H5N1. Confirmation of these results would be cause for concern. Antarctica is relatively close to South America, Africa, and Australia, offering easy access for worldwide spread of H5N1 as the host range and geographical reach continue to expand.More details on the initial results would be useful. If H5N1 is isolated, sequence data would be revealing.
typical pretentious pap from the blogger, without any concept of how H5N1 might have actually got there (cf blithely accepting Ebola might be in Sichuan last year).
edited version of the page now includes, at top:
Quote:WARNING: Some reports indicate that the report below was an April1 hoax published by a Reunion newspaper.[whole Recombinomics site should have a WARNING: This website contains lots of ludicrous notions. Read at your own risk.]
maybe fitting this should be in April, since on 6 April last year Niman announced, “the flu pandemic of 2005 has clearly begun”. (So, on Planet Niman, should have been knee-deep in bodies by Oct last year. Meanwhile, in the real world…)
Recombinomics reminds me of review [by Barry Norman, first I think] of a film called The Idiots – “by idiots, about idiots, for idiots”. [not that H5N1 is an idiot]
Post edited by: martin, at: 2006/04/05 08:17
Thank goodness I have found you guys! I thought I was the only one saying “hey wait a minute?!” :huh:
Just got to wondering about Niman and his promised "shock and awe" – which, like so many of Niman’s predictions, failed to materialise. Googled, and came across a post by joker called Nimon, from 31 March 2007: Shock and Awe has been postponed to April 23, 2007. Discussion at: www dot recombimaniacs dot com/ShockAndAweRescheduled/IMeanItThisTime.html [sadly, defunct]
Belatedly come across CurEvents.com thread – June last year – on Niman being banned for a week from Fluwiki; notes he had also been banned for a week from CurEvents. [forum closed]
Niman banned again
some entertaining posts; some batty stuff – as you'd expect – from Niman supporters, or "Nimatoads" as one person calls them. Best post, to me, is by supermoderator Clawdia, who replies to:
Quote:How many of the niman acolytes do you think are actually Niman himself? Some of them have been active over at fluwiki blasting the moderators for their action and predicting the end of fluwiki. Yawn.– with post including:
Quote:Enough of 'em have been at it so hard and heavy that the same thing occurred to me, Mo'! It seems that some would be unable to fail to notice the pattern that recurs – Niman comes in like god reincarnate Niman gets a bunch of people on the bandwagon Everyone who isn't on the bandwagon becomes a troll Niman repeats himself ad nauseum, with no hard data People question Niman, only to be told they are trolls When enough of the smart folk get sick and tired of the nonsense and his attitude, finally he gets either banned or temporarily suspended. Like a dog with its tail 'twixt its legs, he slinks off into the dark.Niman still spouting nuttiness; email just in from David:
Quote:Hello. I’ve spoken to you a few times in the past, by email, about Henry Niman. I REFUSE to put the word "Doctor" before his name. I just found it amusing last week, to watch him and his "Nimanites", as you say (lol)… GUESS at what an undiagnosed illness on the Prince of Wales island of Alaska, was. Of course, we all know what Niman thought it was. BIRD FLU! Then comes ALL the speculation. One member of the board will try to give a RATIONAL explanation of what it could be… and this person gets verbally assaulted by Niman. So… apparently… HIS word… is LAW. He says its bird flu, and you DONT argue with him. Right? Well… what did it turn out to be? Adenovirus 14. A very NASTY… COLD! That killed one person that already had an existing lung condition. And was also elderly. After this came out… i actually saw a member on the board… THANKING Niman for all the "research" he did on this. I’m like… THANK HIM FOR WHAT??? All he did was GUESS the same thing he ALWAYS guesses. Bird flu. Hes even got something about this Adenovirus 14 on his website, and STILL didnt even MENTION that as a possibility. So, what do they THANK him for?? He belittles everyone that does NOT have the same opinion as him, and they THANK him. I dont get it. I told him hes lucky i’m not a member of that board. Cause if he smarted off to me the way he has some people…. hed be grabbing a dictionary looking to see what all those words meant, that i called him! Then i’d call him up and tell him off personally! I wish i knew what this mans motive was… what his PURPOSE is. I emailed him once and told him if he knows so much and is so brilliant… then, come up with a VACCINE for bird flu, so we wont have to worry about it anymore. Stop wasting your time sittin behind a computer typing bullshit commentaries and posting bullshit on message boards… and try to HELP the situation. Apparently thats not what hes interested in. Hes got another motive…. just not sure what, yet. Anyway, i knew he wasnt one of your favorite people either, so i just wanted to verbally bash him, to someone that might appreciate it. lol Thanks for reading!There’s a new map making the rounds, http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=p&msa=0&msid=106484775090296685271.0004681a37b713f6b5950&source=embed&ll=17.14079,-45.175781&spn=114.994624,178.59375&z=3
now on Swine flu. Lots of unconfirmed cases and “sightings”. Some of these will obviously turn out to be real, but I can’t think that panic helps us more than intelligent preparation.I’d thought this situation seemed custom made for Niman: fears re a pandemic; some info, but much unknown, many people wanting to find more – a ripe situation for fear-mongering.
Seen that Niman has already announced a pandemic; not sure how many pandemics he has announced so far… Bet those acolytes who kept the flu faith are well excited.
http://www.wpxi.com/video/19313969/index.html
hes at it again…
Thanks for this detailed report, this kind of alarmist pseudo scientist is spreading fears all over the web :o(
Martin Williams wrote: "I’d thought this situation seemed custom made for Niman: fears re a pandemic; some info, but much unknown, many people wanting to find more – a ripe situation for fear-mongering.[ Seen that Niman has already announced a pandemic; not sure how many pandemics he has announced so far… Bet those acolytes who kept the flu faith are well excited."
WHO declares swine flu pandemic June 11, 2009 – CBC.news Swine flu, or H1N1 influenza, has reached the pandemic level, the World Health Organization warned Thursday — marking the first time it has called a global flu epidemic in 41 years. "The world is moving into the early days of its first influenza pandemic in the 21st century," WHO’s director-general, Margaret Chan, announced in Geneva after consulting health experts in an emergency meeting." http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/06/11/swine-flu-virus-who-pandemic.html
I just came upon your site and your comments about Niman. The date is Sept 5, 2009 and nearly 3000 have died worldwide and the H1N1 pandemic is killing schoolchildren in America. Care to qualify your scoffery? I think Niman is saving lives right now. And you??
Exactly which lives are being saved by Niman?
H1N1 might be killing people, but death rate similar to seasonal flu. Article notes it tends to be milder in children.
Maybe read above info, re Niman and his multitude of errors and gross exaggerations ("shock and awe" predicted for bird flu…). He thrives on such things.
Pretty interesting – and disgusting -that this website still exists to knock the one person that has been right on this pandemic all along. Peer review is good only when the peers are ready to recognize new ways of thinking. Why would anyone with a completely different theory ask those who have had their heads stuck in the sand to comment on what they see?
I am now and have been a Niman supporter and am proud of it!
I Have read with great interest your take on what I would call Dr Henry Niman’s pseudoscientific position regarding Bird Flu Swine Flu and the like. When he is asked for scientific proof for the isolation, electron micrographs, and biochemical characterization methods of such alleged deadly ‘pathogenic viruses’ he dismisses you as a nut case and never answers the question.
My research has led me to the conclusion (uless proved otherwise)that such deadly ‘pathogenic viruses’ do not physically exist. Why? Because NOBODY to date has ever isolated a complete ‘pathogenic virus’, I have asked many of the so-called self-proclaimed scientific ‘experts'(including Henry Niman)for the proof but NONE has been forthcoming. Until the proof is provided the likes of the Flying Pig Virus H1N1 will remain a virtual reality on Henry Niman’s computer.
I am currently debating with him now(or at least I am trying to). For all those who are interested I’d say its a must read – here’s the URL http://www.virology.ws/2009/11/24/the-d225g-change-in-2009-h1n1-influenza-virus-is-not-a-concern/
Best to all
Tony
Henry, regarding the Minnesota case and the CDC claim.
The first point to make is that the CDC report that you mention does not explain precisely how the samples were taken from the diseased patient e.g. did they come from fresh uncultured plasma or something else? The CDC states that it used a ‘functional assay’ test to ‘confirm’ that specimens obtained from the other collaborating organizations proved positive for the alleged (tr) H3N2 influenza viruses. This is not a direct test for virus. If pathogenic viruses allegedly use cells to reproduce billions of copies and release their progeny into the extracellular fluid, then it should soon become loaded with virions. Therefore no misleading INDIRECT functional methods of virus detection would be necessary. That is because the virus would be so abundant that it could be easily and directly isolated from the plasma by centrifugation techniques free from all contaminants.
To arrive at what the CDC alleges to ‘confirm’ presupposes such an isolated virus free from contaminants. However, correct me if I’m wrong, but the CDC does not claim that anyone actually isolated the virus, or confirm that any of the organizations did so that conducted the initial testing! In that case, if the CDC used an indirect functional method to confirm the alleged virus we would need to know exactly if any of the other organizations involved ‘structurally’ isolated ‘the virus’. However, there is no reference to any such claim, and if there was, electron micrographs are certainly required of anything that is claimed to be a complete isolated virus particle.
Further, there is nothing in the CDC FluView report that warrants the conclusion that the CDC or anybody else has effectively isolated a complete viral genome, or that the alleged ‘virus’ was THE CAUSE of any ‘infection’. At best it’s all speculation and poor science until proven otherwise. What is worse, those who should know better are going along with the charade.
Dr Tom Lankering made a recent comment in The Aspen Times (24.12.10)
In my recent studies I have been enlightened by some interesting information about the flu vaccines. A systematic review of 51 studies involving 260,000 children age 6 to 23 months found no evidence that the flu vaccine is any more effective than a placebo in that group.
A JAMA study showed the incidence of clinical influenza in the vaccinated group was 2 percent but in the un-vaccinated group it was only 3 percent. This means that out of 100 people, one person was attributed with avoiding the flu because of the vaccine.
If it turns out that there really are no ‘pathogenic’ flu viruses then why are people being vaccinated?????????$$$$$$$$$$$$
Regards,
Tony
Here are some of my comments re Henry Niman and the alleged H1N1 Swine Flu virus. They appeared on the Virology Blog site about a month ago. When I have tried to post valid comments since they are usually ‘hijacked’ like the mythical virus that is supposed to ‘hijack’ susceptible cells and be the sole cause of Swine Flu.
Since the belief in ‘pathogenic viruses’ has become so entrenched in the collective psyche one might as well talk to a brick wall as enter into a discussion regarding the actual scientific proof of their existence with Dr Niman! I hope that what follows makes this point perfectly clear to everyone.
Henry Niman 1 month ago.
November J Virology, doi:10.1128/JVI.01136-10, shows D225G transmits via aerosol droplets in ferrets and guinea pigs and binds to alpha 2,3 AND alpha 2,6 as stated previously (and as is OBVIOUS from sequence analysis of pH1N1 fatal cases in Ukraine and Russia).
Discussion of paper at
http://fluboard.rhizalabs.com/…Tony 1 month ago in reply to Henry Niman
Henry, you keep going on about gene sequences allegedly obtained from H1N1 isolates but you can’t grow isolates without first isolating H1N1. You merely postulate the existence of H1N1 like everyone else but you cant prove scientifically that it even exists can you other than a virtual reality on your computer.
Henry Niman 1 month ago in reply to Tony
No one questions the existance of H1N1 except internet nut cases, posting anonymously and frequently.
Tony 1 month ago in reply to Henry Niman
Henry, nobody questioned the existence of phlogiston and dephlogisticated air until Antoine Lavoisier came along and discovered Oxygen. He put chemistry which was standing on its head squarely on its feet and he wasn’t a nut case. He couldn’t post anonymously and frequently because the internet wasn’t invented in 1775! If people prefer not to question the existence of H1N1 then that’s their bad luck, but until you can prove otherwise, and so far you have not done so it will remain a virtual reality on your computer.
Henry Niman 1 month ago in reply to Tony
The are thousands of public H1N1 sequences, from isolates, no pictures required.
Tony 1 month ago in reply to Henry Niman
Henry, electron micrographs (pictures) of the isolated virus in question are always required. If there is no virus then there is no picture to be required!
Henry Niman 1 month ago in reply to Tony
You are posting utter nonsense. H1N1 is quite real as is D225G. Your posts are “internet babble”, at best (no picture required).
Tony 1 month ago in reply to Henry Niman
Henry the questions that are being put to you are simple valid scientifc questions so why don’t you answer them in full, so others can decide whether or not I am posting ‘utter nonsense’ and ‘internet babble’ as you put it. Its fine to refer to peer reviewed stuff in journals but D225G is not the real issue here is it? And I think that you know that too well (or at least I hope that you do by now). Rather its the question of the isolation of the complete virus that D225G is allegedly derived from – who first isolated it, where, when, and what methods were used?
The burden of scientific proof is on you my friend, not me, and so far you have delivered diddly squat – and all that you have delivered to date are a series of vague references to journals that can only speculate on the origins of D225G in the absence of an isolated virus.
You have also turned me into a parrot because I have to keep on repeating my questions over and over because you either cannot or will not answer them and trying to dismiss them on the ‘utter nonsense’ or ‘internet babble’ excuse. Shame on you Henry!Regards to all,
Tony
Niman is at it again. While the people of north-east Japan is struggling to survive under terrible circumstances, Niman predicts:
FUKUSHIMA RADIATION RAISES H5N1 PANDEMIC CONCERNS.
“The worsening situation at the Daiichi nuclear power facility in Fukushima, Japan increases concerns that the H5N1 circulating in wild birds and poultry in the region will be impacted by the release of ionizing radiation. This radiation can lead to rapid evolution of clade 2.3.2 H5N1, which may lead to selection of changes that increase transmission in humans in the region. These changes could quickly spread through displaced persons living in crowded conditions that are far from ideal”.I.e. Nothing is so bad that it can´t get worse with a nice P/H5N1…
Hope you have a Merry Xmas or whatever politically correct season you follow. :laugh:
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