Influenza and the World Community Grid

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The Worldcommunity grid is a datagrid style project where almost half a million people are offering computer cycles to help advance scientific research in a number of fields such as health, nutrition and more. One of the most recent projects to be added to the collection is the one for Influenza. If you so chose you can help speed up the process of finding a solution to the influenza problem.

There is an interesting documentary on History HD called The Virus empire which uses a number of interviews with WHO officials and actors to demonstrate why over-hyping a new virus is the smart thing to do. One interviewee in particular said “If you went back to an army doctor in 1918 and told him that whilst 170 people had died already up to 50 million could die within the year from the Spanish Flu then he would have told you to go back to the 21st century.” What was poignant with this statement is the blasÃ© nature that some people showed towards Swine Flu in certain circumstances.

Two or three weeks ago they said that it may take up to four months to find a solution to the Swine Flu virus. Now take into account the WHO’s effort to get a number of research labs to work in collaboration against the SARS virus and it’s interesting. Apparently it took four days to learn everything there was to know about the nature of the virus but not how to cure it.

That’s where the World Community grid Influenza project comes in. The more computers are used to run models to see which are the best solutions to research the quicker we may have a way of dealing with this new virus.

The project is free and here are the projects you can currently help with;

Help Fight Childhood Cancer
Influenza Antiviral Drug Search
Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy – Phase 2
FightAIDS@Home
Human Proteome Folding – Phase 2
Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together
Help Conquer Cancer
Nutritious Rice for the World
The Clean Energy Project