The next day the number of sick students at the Henan University of Science and Technology in Luoyang city rose to 88, and on March 28 there were 208 sick students in the university's infirmary, it said.

"There were over 400 students that became feverish with the flu," a university official who declined to be named told AFP when contacted by phone.

He refused to detail what type of flu it was or how the outbreak had succeeded in infecting so many students.

Local health officials were currently trying to identify the flu strain, Xinhua said.

The temperatures of some of the students reached 39.6 degrees celsius (103.3 degrees Fahrenheit), it said.

The sick students were quarantined while school officials, under directions from provincial health authorities, cancelled classes and began disinfecting the university's 2,000 dormitory rooms, dining halls and classrooms, it said.

Most students were only hospitalized for about three days and released, the report said, adding that only several dozen students remained hospitalized as of Sunday.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is the nation's only outbreak, which the CDC defines as five or more cases in a concentrated area.

"We are calling this an epidemic," said Iowa state epidemiologist Dr. Patricia Quinlisk, explaining that mumps has spread to more than one-third of the state and does not appear to be confined to certain age groups or other sectors of the population.

Quinlisk said Iowa has had about five cases of mumps a year in recent years, and this is its first large outbreak in nearly 20 years.

"We're trying to figure out why is it happening, why is it happening in Iowa and why is it happening right now. We don't know," she said.

CDC spokeswoman Lola Russell said the federal agency has no answers yet. But Quinlisk said one theory is that the infection was brought over from England - perhaps by a college student - because the strain seen in Iowa has been identified by the CDC as the same one that has caused tens of thousands of cases of the mumps in a major outbreak in Britain over the past two years.

"It may have been a college student, since we did see the first activities on college campuses, but we can't prove that," Quinlisk said. The Public Health Department said 23 percent of the 245 reported patients are in college.

The CDC said it is the nation's biggest epidemic of mumps since 269 cases were reported in Douglas County, Kan., from October 1988 to April 1989.

Mumps is a viral infection of the salivary glands. Symptoms include fever, headache, muscle aches and swelling of the glands close to the jaw. It can cause serious complications, including meningitis, damage to the testicles and deafness.

A mumps vaccine was introduced in 1967. Iowa law requires schoolchildren to be vaccinated against measles and rubella, and the mumps vaccine is included in the same shot. The state's last major outbreak was in 1987, when 476 people were infected.

Of the 245 patients this year, at least 66 percent had had the recommended two-shot vaccination, while 14 percent had received one dose, the Public Health Department said.

"The vaccine is working," Quinlisk said. "The vaccine certainly was made to cover this particular strain, because it's a fairly common strain of mumps." Quinlisk said the vaccine overall is considered about 95 percent effective.

Quinlisk said the mumps outbreak started in eastern Iowa and is spreading statewide and possibly into the neighboring states of Illinois, Minnesota and Nebraska. Those states may have one or two cases, she said.

When 11-year-old Will Hean of Davenport starting feeling sick in mid-January, his family thought he had a bad case of the flu. But his face and throat swelled and his temperature climbed to 103. His parents took him to the doctor, and he was diagnosed to their surprise with full-blown mumps.

About two weeks later, the Heans' daughter, Kate, 21, came down with the mumps, too.

Both children had gotten the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, or MMR. So had their other son, 13-year-old Jimmy, who did not get the mumps.

"He had all the shots and everything. You don't think you're going to get the mumps after you've been inoculated," said Will's father, Wayne Hean.

On smallpox research, the NGOs are asking the WHA to:

* Stop all distribution of smallpox DNA except that necessary for maintaining diagnostic labs, and to prohibit genetic engineering of smallpox, as both create unnecessary and unacceptable biosafety and security risks;

* Withdraw the temporary authorization it granted to retain smallpox virus stocks for genetic sequencing, diagnostic tests and vaccine research, as there is broad agreement that live virus is not needed for these purposes;

* Withdraw temporary authorization for experiments to infect monkeys with the smallpox virus in favor of a safer approach that does not utilize smallpox virus, and;

* Stop temporarily authorized research (that uses smallpox virus) into antiviral drugs in less than two years.

To strengthen international oversight, the NGOs are asking the WHA to:

* Terminate the WHO Advisory Committee on Variola Virus Research which, in over six years of existence, has not developed rigorous oversight and review procedures, has not adequately tracked distribution of smallpox DNA, and has broadly failed to uphold the WHA's mandate to control smallpox research, and;

* Replace the disbanded committee with an oversight body that is geographically and scientifically balanced, that is transparent, and which will reassert international control until the virus stocks are destroyed.

At the 2005 WHA meeting, many governments expressed concerns and objections to US and Russian experiments proposed for approval by the committee, including the genetic engineering of smallpox and the splicing of smallpox genes into related viruses. (A report on the WHA discussion in 2005 is available at www.smallpoxbiosafety.org)

Although the proposal to put smallpox genes in other poxviruses has been withdrawn, a number of dangerous experiments remain on the table. This could take place if the WHA does not act to stop them this year.

The Cabinet Office paper has been circulated only to "Category 1 responders" - emergency services chiefs, local authorities, NHS officials and others responsible for drawing up contingency plans. It details the preparations under way for a flu pandemic arising in a number of ways, including the mutation of the H5N1 virus among birds.

The document warns that, once such an infection arrives in Britain, it could take only two weeks to become widespread. Issued in late February, it contains the latest updated projections for the spread of a "novel" form of the common flu virus to which people would have no immunity.

One of its central themes is the possibility that the virus could mutate again after an initial widespread infection, producing further pandemic waves. Those projections include a "reasonable worst-case scenario" in which multiple waves of the virus infect a total of 50 per cent of the population. At worst, the disease would be as powerful as the strain that caused the 1918 global pandemic, killing 2.5 per cent of those infected.

"This combination would give rise to an estimated 709,300 excess deaths in the UK across the whole period of the pandemic, spread across one or more waves," the Cabinet Office paper concludes.

However, that death toll is at the extreme of the scenarios considered by government scientists. The "base case", which experts believe most likely, is for an estimated 53,700 excess deaths from a multi-wave pandemic.

According to the Cabinet Office's civil contingencies secretariat, a flu pandemic is one of the greatest current threats to the UK. A mutated strain of the H5N1 avian flu virus is one possible source of such an infection, but however the new strain arises, it is projected to spread rapidly.

"Scientific modelling suggests that it may only take 2-3 weeks from the virus first entering the UK to its being widespread," the Cabinet Office paper states.

Some disaster scenarios constructed by independent experts foresee troops being called in to help manage a mass flu infection. But the Cabinet Office warns there can be no guarantee that the armed forces will be able to help.

"Planning for an influenza pandemic should take into account that military support may not be available if local units are deployed on operations," the paper says. "Nor should it be assumed that local units have personnel available with either the skill or equipment to undertake specialist tasks."

That could leave local councils having to cope with problems such as disposing of thousands of extra corpses that would overwhelm normal mortuary capacity and result in bodies being stockpiled before mass burials.

"A key point for local planning is likely to be the identification of potential sites for the location of facilities for the temporary storage of bodies, prior to funerals taking place," the document says.

The possibility of responding with mass burials is raised in a second leaked document, this one prepared by the Home Office.

It uses a "prudent worst-case" death toll of 320,000.

In such an event, Home Office planners estimate that bodies could be stored for up to 18 weeks before being buried.

The paper accepts that the prospect of mass burial may cause public anxiety and says: "Common burial stirs up images of the burial pits used in the great plague of 1665 - where in London 70,000 people died."

In fact, the mass burials envisaged would more closely resemble temporary sites used after major wars. The dead would be consigned to individual coffins and buried in discreet graves, with names clearly marked, in unconsecrated fields.

After the pandemic had passed, the coffins could then be disinterred and reburied in formal ceremonies elsewhere.

Government departments yesterday declined to comment on the leaked documents, but the Home Office issued a statement about emergency planning.

"The government is taking seriously the possible threat of an influenza pandemic in the light of the global situation and the possibility that a novel strain of the influenza virus could emerge," it said.

"Prudent precautionary planning is under way across all elements of the response, including the health service, other essential services and local authorities."

Experts say various factors such as air pollution, animal fur and dust mites could act as triggers for allergies but that the levels of allergic reaction vary from country to country.

"There is an epidemic of allergic disease in Europe and elsewhere in the world," Peter Burney, vice president of research at the Global Allergy and Asthma European Network (GALEN), told reporters on Friday.

Allergies were most prevalent in Britain and Ireland, as well as other English speaking countries like Canada, Australia and the United States, Burney said, adding they were also becoming more widespread in new
European Union member states.

"It's not a problem which is going to go away soon," he added, noting that as allergy sufferers get older the complications resulting from their condition tend to get worse.

"We have data showing that up to the age of 55, people do not lose their allergies, but that the complications are greater," he said. "This is a serious problem."

Failure to treat allergies could also increase the risk of patients developing asthma later in life, GALEN's general secretary Torsten Zuberbier said, calling for early diagnosis and treatment of sufferers.

"We have valid data that one third of European Union people have allergies but only 10 percent of these millions of people are treated well," Zuberbier said, adding that around 40 percent of children with untreated hay fever will develop asthma.

"We need early treatment in children and we can avoid the large burden of social and economic costs," he said.

The GALEN network has established standard practice across Europe in diagnosing allergies and it has now begun to draw up guidelines on how best to treat the conditions.

"If we go too much in the direction of virtual sex, what's left out? How you get along in a personal sphere is getting short shrift," Heiman said in a conference call with reporters.

While cyber-sex fueled by drugs such as Viagra might be tempting, it is "built for disappointment" because real life can seldom compete with fantasies, panelists said.

"The breakneck speed of technology development allows one to create one's own erotic ideal and a multi-sensory experience of virtual sex," said Heiman.

"If young people are learning in this fashion, what about the very personal aspect of sex in which you have to interact with the other person?"

A compounding factor will likely be pharmaceutical companies eagerly expanding the array of drugs that enhance sexual activity, Heiman said.

Erection-stimulating drugs such as Viagra could exacerbate the "individualization" of sex, said professor John Gagnon of the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

"The other part of the couple may not be consenting to the erection," Gagnon said. "The assumption is the woman will be happy if the fellow arrives with one."

Technology and Viagra-type medicine combine to push people out of social relationships and reduce their capacity to relate to each other, according to Gagnon.

"Like one simulates a bombing run," Gagnon said. "It distances you from the person being hit by the bomb."

Another potentially disturbing ingredient in the mix is that the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and ensuing "war on terror" are inuring society to violence, Heiman said.

"The tolerance of violence may be making a comeback," Heiman said. "And when that happens, sexual violence will be tolerated."

Technology is pushing people apart just as online dating services bring others together, according to panelists.

The Internet is increasingly a place for people with shared interests to form online communities and for people to seek dates or mates, said Pepper Schwartz, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington.

"Every country, no matter how undeveloped, has dating sites," Schwartz said. "My experience is people want to get offline as quick as possible. People are looking for partners, looking for love."

The Internet could also serve as a trove of information dispelling misconceptions about sexual lifestyles, health and trends, according to panelists.

The researchers, who joined about 100 peers for the three-day conference, hoped the coming decade would see more research into the roles of race, medicine, age, technology and political conservatism on sexuality.

"When one gets into the predicting the future business," Gagnon said jokingly. "One gets into a situation where you are mostly wrong."