http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP/menuitem.2af62ecb329d3d7733492d9253

In the dungeons of Zul'Gurub, frequented by online game enthusiasts, a giant winged serpent called Hakkar the Soulflayer may offer important clues to epidemiologists trying to predict the impact of a pandemic.

In September 2005, a plague called "corrupted blood" caused mayhem in the hugely popular online game World of Warcraft. What happened next illustrates the kind of issues policymakers will have to grapple with now that the swine flu outbreak has spread beyond Mexico.

When I was a child growing up in England in the 1960s, my mother's dream for me was that I would become a bank clerk, with ambitions to be a bank manager, the epitome of all that was best in the world, safe, reliable, honest, looking after people's hard-earned savings, helping business and the world to grow. A bank manager could countersign your passport application, that's how trusted he was.