Common cold research Laboratory Harnham Down moved to Southern Rail posted on Royston - BIZFACE®

BlogWatch · #1 3rd December 2007, 17:25

I'm not sure if BizFace readers remember the Doctor in Love film series (I am not that old ed.) and the one where the action took place at the Foulness anti-cold research unit - based on the real one a Harnham Down near Porton Down as it happens. At this joyful place guinea pigs were subjected to cold winds, cold showers, and all sorts of 'treatments' in the name of research into the common cold. There was also a crappy plot as usual in this cheaply made comedy. It strikes me they missed a trick because as every commuter knows the best place to catch a cold and to observe the epidemiology of the disease is not at a research Lab but on the railways!

I was in my normal slot on yer Southern Rail listening to a stereo version of sneezing, coughing and wheezing from my fellow passengers when I started musing about the forthcoming outbreak, so we've all been told, of a global flu pandemic. It occurred to me that the two most likely places where the eighth plague will break out will be not in some god forsaken place in the far east but here in good old Blighty either at a turkey farm or in a first class cabin on the train.

A certain murky turkey manufacturing site in Norfolk is where bird flu will be confirmed (third time lucky) where the bio security (i.e. the door is left open) fails again and all the turkeys escape and gamble round in the cool winter sunshine for a couple of hours with the local crows and the entire country is infected in a matter of days (Bootiful as Bernie would say). The second hot spot will be the first class cabin where even in the sanctuary of peace and quiet the jerks with colds mostly sneeze and cough without the slightest attempt to stick anything in front of their faces - a hankerchief is clearly a dying artefact - gone the way of spats, cravats and clogs I expect. Now in the hundreds of thousands of water droplets ejected at 300 mph plus there are millions of cold viruses all winging their way towards you. You have no more than a quarter of a second to react (so forget it ed.) before all these viruses, snot particles and bacteria (definitely not the friendly type) arrive. I did hear once that they mostly get you when you touch a surface that has been sneezed on or they get in via the eyelid or sclera - whatever route you get your quota of flu via express delivery as your trapped with the carrier in an enclosed space. So the likely scenario is an outbreak in Norfolk followed by a rapid diffusion following the main Rail arterial routes throughout the UK arriving at Lingfield Station where I catch the train two weeks after the first case!

However I must say I am prepared - my old hypochondriac dad always told me a dead cert way of avoiding catching colds which I feel the need coming on to share. All you have to do is to gargle with Detol - he did this for years and never had a cold he'd say - and gets rid of bad breath to boot!!

Cheers Roy
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Royston

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**Simon Donnelly** · #2 IP: 86.160.93.96 4th December 2007, 16:35

Ah! The Common Cold Unit or Cold Research Centre.

I used to go to it as a guinea pig in my younger days. What a great 10-day holiday it provided - and all for free! In fact, the "patients" used to get paid 2/6d (12.5p) per day + travel expenses if I remember rightly. Three full meals a day + all your coffee/tea and snacks, all in luxury (ahem!) accommodation consisting of long, comfortable huts erected by the Americans in WW2.

As long as you didn't mind socialising from a 10 metre distance and not going into towns or pubs, it was great! Good walking, peace and quiet, getting away from it all. People used to go back year after year.

Sometimes you might have been unlucky enough to actually be given a cold or flu virus and sometimes the control (just saline solution). Anyone remember the fears arouns sine flu which allegedly killed an American soldier? I was one of the lucky few to be given a dose of it in a trial that proved it to be non-lethal (they told us afterwards!).

No buckets of water or ice cubes. All very civilised with games rooms, a superb snooker table and tennis courts. Fantastic!

The advice that I had from the medical staff was to take a hot toddy just before you go to bed if you're showing cold symptoms. Sounds like a daily preventative to me!

Sadly the unit closed many years back, although I believe that there is another in Bristol now. May be worth checking out...