Three new deaths and eight new cases reported in Toronto, Monday May 26.

Excerpts from:

Wall Street Journal

FRIDAY, MAY 23, 2003

Theories about the origin of SARS:

At a recent conference, a member of Russia's respected Academy of Medicine stated that the SARS virus was a man-made cocktail of mumps and measles, according to Russian news reports.

The Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, has written that "...there are compelling reasons, however unsettling, to at least ask whether there might be any linkage between SARS and China's biological-warfare efforts."

Nobody yet knows exactly where SARS comes from, it has been traced to southern China's Guangdong province, where millions of birds, farm animals and people live in close proximity, creating a potential breeding ground for new viruses such as SARS.

Mr. Wickramasinghe is a professor of applied mathematics and astronomy at Cardiff University in Britain, and his SARS theory is being published in the Lancet, an august scientific journal.

"With respect to the SARS outbreak, a prima facie case for a possible space incidence can already be made," Prof. Wickramasinghe and his colleagues write in a letter published Friday in the Lancet.

In explaining the origin of SARS, Prof. Wickramasinghe suggests that the virus hitched a ride on a comet and then drifted down to Earth. He notes that two years ago Indian scientists launched a high-altitude balloon and recovered a large amount of bacteria from a height of 41 kilometers (25.4 miles). But attempts to culture several of the "unusual" bacterial strains failed. "The conclusion is that micro-organisms are coming from space," says Prof. Wickramasinghe, who is also director of the Cardiff Centre of Astrobiology.

He has now expanded on those findings to explain SARS. "A small amount of the culprit virus introduced into the stratosphere could make a first tentative fallout east of the great mountain range of the Himalayas, where the stratosphere is thinnest," he and his colleagues write in the Lancet.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle