- OSLO (Reuters) - Scientists seeking frozen traces of a deadly 1918
flu virus in an Arctic cemetery suffered a major setback on Tuesday when
they found seven coffins in a shallow grave too warm to preserve the bug.
``This is uncomfortable for us. We weren't expecting to find coffins at
this level, 20 to 30 cm (eight to 12 inches) below the surface,'' said
Tom Bergan, a Norwegian professor on the team. ``We cannot find any samples
of the virus at this depth,'' he told Reuters from Spitzbergen island,
800 miles (1,300 km) from the North Pole. ``The coffins we have looked
into contain only bones.'' The scientists started the exhumation on Saturday
hoping to find frozen corpses of seven Norwegian coal miners who died in
1918 of ``Spanish flu,'' which killed between 20 and 40 million people,
or more than all the battles of World War One. The scientists, from Canada,
the United States, Britain and Norway, have been hoping to find out what
made the 1918 flu so lethal and so develop vaccines against any future
pandemics. They had believed that the coffins were in the permafrost --
about 2.0 to 2.5 metres below the surface -- where bodies and the virus
would be in an eternal deep freeze. The seven coffins found during excavations
on Tuesday were all in soil that thaws in summer, where bacteria quickly
break down soft tissues like lungs -- and with them any trace of the virus.
The permafrost starts at about one metre (yard) below the surface. Bergan
said the digging would continue since scientists were unsure if the coffins
belonged to the seven coal miners. One hope was that the coffins were of
unknown people and added on top of the original burial pit. ``We will continue
the excavation down into the permafrost,'' Bergan said, adding: ``We are
trying to work to identify the bodies. So far we have not found any markers
on the coffins.'' The team originally decided to go ahead with the exhumations
only after a high-tech ``ground penetrating radar'' survey last year indicated
the corpses were in the permafrost. ``The radar experts are going over
their measurements again,'' Bergan said. The radar survey had not given
any hint of the coffins near the surface. The scientists, using high tech
gear including astronaut-style anti-infection suits, had expected to find
the Norwegian miners, aged 18 to 29, in a row of coffins deep down. The
Spanish flu sweptdern Black Death. It probably originated in the United
States and spread rapidly among troops deployed in the last months of World
War One. Unlike most flus, it hit the young hardest. Scientists speculate
that the elderly -- usually the most susceptible to flu -- may have built
up an immunity from a cocktail of similar flu viruses in the late 19th
century.
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