Slashdot Mirror
Timely Book On Bird Flu
Lifelongactivist writes, "A new free book about bird flu has been published by Michael Greger, M.D., the US Humane Society's director of public health and animal agriculture. Bird Flu: a Virus of Our Own Hatching (the site contains the entire book text) tells why modern industrialized agricultural methods, including factory farming, antibiotics misuse, and the use of animal refuse as a food source (!) for chickens and other livestock, have led to a staggering increase in the number of 'zoonotic' diseases that can leap from animals to people, and make a bird flu pandemic likely. The book discusses in practical terms what you can do to prevent infection and what to do if you do catch the disease. The book is especially timely given yesterday's news that a new, vaccine-resistant variant of H5N1 has been detected in China."
Update: 10/31 19:44 GMT by KD : Corrected to read "vaccine-resistant."
Update: 10/31 19:44 GMT by KD : Corrected to read "vaccine-resistant."
I don't suppose they recommend eating a bowl of chicken noodle soup, do they?
As I recall, viruses aren't treated with antibiotics. The strain mentioned in the last link is resistant to the immune response generated by current vaccines. It may seem like a small distinction, but people demanding antibiotic treatment courses from their doctors regardless of the actual infecting agent is one of the reasons we have such a rapid spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria.
I guess this isn't really news.
Don't trust anything that bleeds for a week and lives.
Being that antibiotics are for bacterial infections and not viruses
Supplies!
Slashdot folk should be bright enough to know better. ALL viri are 100% immune to antibiotics. Antibiotics only work against germ based diseases.
Anyway.... Someday we will get another major pandemic, and yes our modern industrial livestock methods will contribute some to it. But they popped up before and will still pop up if we abandoned it. The question for debate is: are the potential savings from lowering the odds of a pandenic worth the certain loss of life from famine and all it's attendant problems that would result from losing the food production capacity gained from industrialization.
Democrat delenda est
Here in the US, the poultry farmers don't clean the cages at all and to compensate, they pump up the birds up with antibiotics to keep them from getting sick.
... has a way of "balancing things out". The current population of the planet is only possible thanks to technological advancements such as tech that allows for us to create more food and move it to where the people are. Now, as the population goes up, you need to increase the output of food. It seems that perhaps we are hitting a limit, where we can't product enough food (given current methods) without causing a huge human plague, and mother nature is going to tell us that here pretty soon.
Sounds like nothing we didn't learn from BSE (Mad Cow Disease), At least that stopped British farmers inserting brain matter back into the food chain.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I must get a vaccine so I don't get strep throat. Help. I have the flu, I demand Pennicillin. I'm just making fun of the post after post of the same subject. Its like a viral post where everyone posts the same thing in different words, Yay for technology.
God spoke to me.
I haven't heard about the Bird Flu for a while, the panic has past. I think the word you were looking for is Late.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Antibiotics work on bacteria, not on viruses. This new virus is not stopped by the current vaccine, although the reason for that is unclear.
Flu has something somewhat like chromosomes: different strands of genetic material that can mix and recombine. As a result there are many, many subvarieties of influenza. The way vaccination works (currently and for the forseeable future) is it presents parts of the virus to your immune system so your immune system can subsequently recognize them and fight them off. We can't present every single possible viral coat in one shot (mostly because we haven't ever encountered most of them so we don't have any way of making them to put into the shot) so what we do is take the viruses that are currently active in China, put those in the shot, and give those to suseptible populations. It's a different mix every single year, and it sounds like now this one has changed enough it's time for another mix, just like every other year.
A reason that flu is particularly worrisome is that it's shared between pigs, chickens, and humans, which is somewhat unusual; in many places in the world people, pigs, and chickens live in close contact, which makes cross-infection easy; and when a person, pig or chicken catches two different varieties of flu, they can recombine (because of the multiple strands of genetic material) and create a whole new variety that is unlike anything seen before. The new variety will suddenly have a whole world of unprepared immune systems to go attack, so it'll do very well indeed for a while.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Actually, there is a very similar home treatment recommended here: http://www.fluwikie.com/uploads/Consequences/NewGu ideOct7b.pdf
It's called Oral Rehydration Therapy, and I'm getting together
the ingredients this week.
t rol/maskguidance.htm
l m-were-screwed.html
Another preparation that's recommended is that you have a surgical face mask to avoid breathing in the virus, and to avoid spreading it if you're infected but not showing symtoms. Here's a reference: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/professionals/infectioncon
I've heard several speakers on this topic recently, including Dr. Michael Osterholm of Univ. of Minn., and it's just a matter of time before avian flu, specifically H5N1, comes to your town (and everybody's). Several city administrations that I'm familiar with (including Plymouth and Minneapolis, MN, and Alameda, CA) are making specific preparations, mainly around "how do we operate the city when 30-40% of our staff are out sick themselves or busy at home caring for their family members". Alameda is preparing centers to distribute vaccine, once one is available.
Here's an interview with Dr. Osterholm: http://effectmeasure.blogspot.com/2005/06/osterho
but is it soybean oil resistant?
Malthus called. He says he wants his crap theories back.
Please let's be clear, it's not antibiotic resistant, because the flu is not a bacteria it's a virus. It's a vaccine resistant strain, which is very different.
It means the chickens aren't protected from GETTING this strain of bird flu. However once they have it there's no drug that currently exists to treat it, it all comes down to one's own immune system (however in the case of chickens it simply means death since I can't see a hospital being set up to care for them and give them hot chicken soup... nevermind)
It would be an anti-viral drug that would have to be developed to treat someone infected with any kind of flu/cold, not an antibiotic. And those are a lot harder to develop, it's much simpler to make a vaccine which causes an immune response preventing any infection from being able to set in to begin with.
It's also why all these antibiotics given to animals in our food supply are nearly completely pointless to begin with, they don't help with viral infections and only make bacteria more resistant.
I've never understood the huge stress people put on the bird flu. Maybe it is 10 times as likely to mutate to kill millions as any other virus... but there are millions of different viruses. The billions we spend on defending against what might someday become a threat of unknown proportion... would be far better spent on general virus research. Otherwise chances are another virus will mutate and kill us all while we wait for the bird flu to do the same. It's just another excuse to waste all our money.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
"The book is especially timely given yesterday's news that a new, antibiotics-resistant variant of H5N1 has been detected in China."
The article linked to doesn't even mention antibiotics. I mean, come on. Typical fact-free hype.
If you want a good book about influenza:
"The Great Influenze: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History" by John M. Barry, 2005, is about the 1918 Pandemic and discusses everything you need to know about flu, pandemics etc.
How does technology, population size and food production equate to a plague, much less an anthropomorphic deity telling us squat? It's just not that simple. If people would wash their hands more, wear masks, etc, the flu would be almost non-existent. Those are social norms, not technology or population dependent.
And at no point does some woman in a billowy outfit ever come into the picture.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I'm glad I'm a programmer.
My Freakin Blog
Since several already beat me to the antibiotics being for bacteria and not viruses, I'll have to add:
If the theory is that the industrial farming of livestock leads to cross-species infection, then there's not a lot to indicate that. Bird flu is a particularly good example, seeing as how the H5N1 strain mentioned originated in poultry from pre-industrial style farms in southeast Asia. All of the cases outside of that region have been detected in wild birds. Crossing species has only been reported among people in those areas where there's protracted contact with the birds.
The referenced site overstates the virulence of the H5N1 flu as well.
Antibiotics don't select for strains of the virus, and strictly speaking neither do vaccinations.
Animal products being fed to the same species can be a problem for prion-based disorders, but that represents a very situation that produces a toxin, not a virulent disease.
As far as treatment for it, that's easy. There's only two: vaccination, and transfusion of blood from someone that's already had it. Other than that, you just treat the symptoms and hope for the best.
What a shit job!
:-)
Yep, I went there.
My mom says I'm cool.
Bird flu is a bird disease. Although there are cases where people have managed to catch it from birds, they are extremely rare, only a few hundred in the whole world. Worry more about shark attacks.
WRONG. Antibiotics do nothing against viruses. Good going, submitter.
Another preparation that's recommended is that you have a surgical face mask to avoid breathing in the virus
The flu virus is not airborne; it is contact spread. The most common sources of infection are doorknobs and money, but the most common source of infection by the Avian Flu is from handling birds. Wear gloves.
Wearing a surgical mask is not to prevent you from catching the flu virus, it is to prevent you from spreading it when you sneeze on people/things, putting them into contact with your infected, precious bodily fluids.
KFG
Make it a movie. Preferably one starring Jean Claude van Damme and a suitably attractive love interest who save the world from a deadly strain of bird flu. I'd be all over that.
Anti (Against)- Biotic (Relating to Life)...
Antibiotic- Anti-Life, so technically a viral immunization could be considered an antibiotic (as long as you consider a virus to be alive, which is an open scientific question). The the virus itself could also be considered antibiotic, as could anti-freeze and anti-personnel mines. It sounds nitpicky, but no more so than usual for slashdot. The editor should probably go back and insert antiviral resistant, and penicillin should probably be referred to as anti-bacteriological.
"Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey?"- Peter Gabriel
modern industrialized agricultural methods, including factory farming, antibiotics misuse, and the use of animal refuse as a food source (!) for chickens and other livestock, have led to a staggering increase in the number of 'zoonotic' diseases that can leap from animals to people, and make a bird flu pandemic likely
Which claim raises the question: why is it that flu pandemics always originate in the Far East, where none of these things are prevalent?
The conventional wisdom is that in the Orient there is far more routine contact between human beings and food animals, and far less emphasis on maintaining a relatively hygenic environment in the places where such contact occurs. Part of this is cultural (some food animals in China are typically sold to consumerss while still alive) and part of it is economic (factory farming is capital intensive, and agriculture has tended to lag other industries in industrialization. The transfer of viruses between humans and animals made possible by this routine contact is what produces cross-species pandemics.
On the other hand, factory farming keeps animals pretty much completely isolated from humans (and the outdoors, freedom to move, wild grasses, and everything else.)
So while I'm no fan of all aspects of modern factory farming, I have very little doubt that it is at least partly responsible for the relative scarcity of flu pandemics that originate in the West.
The article itself is just fud, and the person submitting it is not an environmentalist, but rather just another religious kook who has wandered into the wrong movement.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
I hear that restricting one's liquid intake to grain alcohol and rainwater works wonders for avian flu..
PARANOIA!
the use of animal refuse as a food source
Eat recycled food, for a happier, healthier life. Be kind and peaceful to each other, eat recycled food. Recycled food - it's good for the environment, and ok for you.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
is chicken copulation out of the question? You know, just out of curiosity....
Monstar L
A better book about bird flu is prolly 'The Great Influenza' by John Barry.
You can bet my family has two weeks worth of food and more importantly loaded weapons. This is not scare mongering, this is being prepared.
I don't want to downplay this too much, even my place of work has a new phone tree in case we need to call people to tell them everyone's dead...
But haven't more people died from spinach, indeed, from pretty much anything else that's deadly, than bird flu? I'm not saying it won't be eventually become more prevalent, but I think the likelihood of getting hit by a jet airliner's frozen poop is proba.....
I don't understand your use of the polemic "fear mongering", nor do I see why this book is "clearly" a case of it. Is the logic, "if I don't like the message it's fear mongerging, but if approve of the message it's a sober wake-up call?" Seems like the authors of the book did *a lot* more research than you have.
More fear mongering to get us to buy Tamiflu.....
p
http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/tamiflu.as
This is the kind of fear mongering which is used to divert peoples attention from real issues.
Although the author may be exploiting the media hype for his own ego. There are other problems/viruses that are here now and are killing people. West Nile virus, deer tick virus, Lyme disease. But lets all concentrate only on something that hasn't even materialized yet. Why not worry about one of these mutating into something worse.
This is tantamount to worrying about gay marriage instead of the 2800 US soldiers killed in Irag. Once we can get the focus on that then we can start focusing on how many people have been killed in Irag period.
It seems that with the improvements in media for dispensing information, we find ourselves worrying without proper priorities.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
http://www.greatbirdfluhoax.com/c /dp/0785221875
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Bird-Flu-Hoax-Pandemi
See South Park, Episode 0605, Fun With Veal.
Democrat delenda est
Wearing such masks while sick is common behavior in Japan, and I think it's a darned good idea.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I have 33 cows, they all eat grass.(yes, this is quite small compared to the huge operations, just what I have anecdotally to talk about) Switching to grain farming wouldn't be very productive here, just the equipment outlay would make it impractical and the way the land is here would make it impractical. It's only practical on the really huge and mostly flat terrain farms that can justify the potential ROI. Modern equipment is *not cheap*., and with few exceptions, local property taxes-and just land prices by the acre- are starting to kill off all the medium and small farming operations. The bulk of the farmers now are only able to keep farming because the land is in the family for generations, but without estate tax reform, that is vanishing rapidly. Until you can get the people(consumers) and the federal government to recognize that food-agriculture is of *critical* national importance and they change and alter the tax structure to reflect that, I mean radical changes including entire season floats on loan and operating costs expenses if there is a widespread drought, etc,, you will have the ag setup you see right now, which is the closest to even being marginally profitable for the bulk of the farmers out there.
In essence, you need to walk a mile in the other guy's muddy boots to see what is right and wrong with "the system" as it stands now.
This book sounds like it does a pretty good job of explaining many of the issues, often caused by the greed of the factory farming and agribusiness companies which seek to maximise profit, at the expense of everything else. The fact that chickens are fed shit (literally), and kept in inhumane and unhealthy conditions has been well known for years. We also see this in the cattle industry, where cows were fed parts of other animals, which may have led to mad cow disease. Cows are herbivorous, and should not eat meat.
Not only are the health issues deplorable, but the way these animals are treated as well. Many of these farms are called concentration camp farms and are hell on earth. The animals are kept in small cages where they cannot move, crowded with many other birds. Some are kept in large warehouses and never see the outdoors, and are still crowded and often go insane, attacking other chickens. This often leads to cruel practices such as debeaking the chickens with hot blades. Like people, chickens need time away from others of their type.
At slaughter, cows are supposed to be stunned with a bolt gun. But since the line moves so fast, many cows are not stunned properly and knocked out, and make it to the disassembly part of the line still conscious. Workers are not allowed to stop the line or if they do they may be fired.
Chickens are not stunned, their necks are slit and they bleed to death, slow and painful, but hopefully before they get to the processing sections of the line. The floor in this facilities is basically a lake of blood.
If most Americans knew what happens to animals in these plants, most would demand humane slaughter and living conditions for all animals, or at least, I would hope.
"It's called Oral Rehydration Therapy, and I'm getting together the ingredients this week. "
:-)
You're getting the ingredients together this week? Man, if you don't already have water, sugar, and salt, then you might be in trouble.
The sugar and salt method is used because almost EVERYONE has those ingredients available, not because it's the best. It is enough, though, that even with severe diarrhea, you can survive almost indefinitely - certainly long enough to get medical care. Sugar gives you a way to rapidly absorb some calories before it shoots out the other end, and salt provides soidum and chloride ions, two of the major (I should say THE two major) electrolites in the body. But, there are others, like potassium - and so a bottle of gatorade (you can buy large tubs of powdered gatorade) is much better than the salt-and-water. And there's still another major step up, pedialyte is much better than gatorade as well. Having been through some very serious illnesses in other countries, I can tell you that not only does pedialyte work MUCH better, it's also a bit more tasty than plain salt-and-sugar water.
(In some countries, hospitals have cholera units where patients are put in hammocks with a hole cut for their butts, and 5-gallon buckets beneath them.)
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
"how do we operate the city when 30-40% of our staff are out sick themselves or busy at home caring for their family members"
An even better approach would be "How can we send as many people as possible home, so we're not contributing to the problem by having them spread it around at the office?"
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
"The flu virus is not airborne; it is contact spread."
Yes, but it's a respiratory virus. That means that the afflicted person needs to get the virus out through the mouth or nasal passages - like rubbing their noses, or sneezing. It also means that you have to get some on you, and then get it into your respiratory tract - like rubbing your eyes or nose, chewing your nails, etc.. Wearing a mask helps prevent the spread on both ends, even if it just keeps people from sneezing on you, and keeps you from picking your nose.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Um, not sure why this was modded as a Troll but I don't believe it's fair. I think the author expresses some valid concerns that also appear in other threads that are not modded unfavorably.
Here is generic info for those who aren't much aware on the topic.
Yes half the people on the face of earth would say bird flu is hyped...
But for once imagine if the virus actually becomes capable of spreading from human to human, what then? infinite deaths in a very short while! It has happened in the past too.
Theoretically speaking such genetic changes in virus' RNA are possible via antigenic drift, which also has happened in past!
As the virus keeps changing genetically we are unable to have pre-made accurate vaccines against it. Immunization is out of question for the same reason. Hence the only surest hope today is to know the disease and prevent its infection.
So whats the problem listening to them - to those who are coining such theories of a pandemic? especially when we have no unfailing measures which we can count on. All they are asking for are SOME precautions, some investment in reasearch, some bird-killings when infected on mass scale....
Hygiene and disinfection using even casual methods like washing and following general cleanliness guidelines at home can reduce the chances of flu infection by 99%. And also the need of training, in better ways of poultry farming, especially to farmers from developing countries!
Traditional farming where people are in close regular contact with their pigs and their birds is just the thing for mixing and incubating cross-species infections. Factory farming means the animals are overcrowded and disease-prone but doesn't create the evolutionary niche for cross-platform bugs.
Wearing a mask . . . keeps you from picking your nose.
The hell it does.
KFG
It is a tribute to us all that this article was tagged "FUD".
IAAPS (I am a Poultry Scientist - that's not a joke) and in the course of my studies I had to take a couple of classes about poultry diseases. The professor taught us long before anyone knew about AI (avian influenza or "bird flu" as the media likes to say) that it had great potential to cause a pandemic, and the key, according to him, was China. He said that diseases do not often pass easily from bird to human -- the physiology is simply too different. However, diseases pass quite readily from birds to pigs, and also readily from pigs to humans. In China, chickens, pigs, and humans all live in close proximity to one another, with a great amount of close contact -- especially in the rural areas. Thus, any new mutations (and viruses are quite prone to mutate) could move quite quickly from bird to human. As we all know, human population density in China is quite high; thus, it is a prime starting place for new epidemics. Once infected humans move about the world, as they are wont to do, the disease spreads, etc.
His suggestion was an emphasis on biosecurity, much like in the US -- where visitors are kept at a minimum, shoes must be covered with clean covers, animals are kept away from the houses, rodent and pest control protocols are followed, etc. In this way, we have been largely successful (not perfect, mind you, but largely successful) in keeping AI out of American flocks.
If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy.
Well, lets think for a moment where the E. coli involved in the spinach-related deaths came from. It's not normally living on spinach. It came from cattle on a nearby farm.
-- http://uncannyvalley.org/
... crops up as a trace element in minerals. There is a thing that sheep get when they are deficient in arsenic (yes, really!) but I can't remember what it is. The dose needed is, AFAIR, in the microgramme range per animal per year. Very tiny amounts.
killing off your own domestic food production is a pretty good way to get held up at some point. It is a national security issue because food is a necessity, we aren't talking about iPods and gameboys here. IMO, all nations need to be as self sufficient as possible, in widely diverse regions, because we can't control the weather. look at the grains markets this year, all three major wheat poducing areas got half borked from drought....which means you never know. It's also a fact that energy prices keep going up, making transportation more expensive. Nope, I'll have to pass, I think we need more farmers in more local areas. Plus, at least here we have some restrictions on farming practices and some oversight on how chemicals are used. A lot of these other places have no restrictions at all.
And a million bucks isn't that much for even a small farm anymore, it isn't, and the estate tax is a tax on money that has already been taxed, again, a bad idea. And now we get into economic issues, and in a fiat currency system like we have, all income taxes are social engineering, they have nothng to do with funding government, nothing, zero. They are a command and control carrot and stick social engineering force used to make people do what a lot of rich people want,and that's it. Tariffs and use taxes are taxes, income taxes are a con game scam used by the elite. Again, this is precisely because we have a fiat currency. If we didn't, I wouldn't have this opinion, but we do, so I do.
As to the big feedlots, I agree, I would prefer the laws adjusted so it is possible to sell easier and more locally as an independent. I like making sure the cows are happy and got some room to move, I don't like enclosed lots-but that's the system that has evolved. I would rather they didn't do the subsidies and just hired more inspectors, I would love to be able to sell directly to a market rather than the auction, but the hoop jumping for small amounts is way too high. And instead o subsidies then, farmers could make more in their pocket, eliminate one step of middlemen, and be able to bank for bad years. In *very* bbad years, all they need is a loan suspension for all their bills for that year, a delay rather than a bailout. that would be enough. You can't force nature, it is really hard to try and run a "this quarter" mentality dealing with living things and the weather, as much as they keep trying to do that.
tells why modern industrialized agricultural methods, including factory farming, antibiotics misuse, and the use of animal refuse as a food source (!) for chickens and other livestock, have led to a staggering increase in the number of 'zoonotic' diseases
Staggering increase? Due to modern industrialized agricultural methods?
The fact is, pandemics have increased in the past couple hundred years because people are able to travel further, faster. That's the only reason pandemic are relatively modern. Epidemics of diseases, including influenza epidemics have been happening since the first influenza viruses evolved into existence.
Most of the deadlier influenza epidemics and pandemics both modern and going back, at least, hundreds of years in history, were the result of animal to human crossover. And the only reason this isn't confirmed further back is likely as lack of samples with which we can test with modern technology (we do have samples of some of the viruses from epidemics and pandemics of the past few hundred years, preserved in various ways, sometimes by accident.)
This isn't a result of modern agricultural methods. It's the result of the ease with which say, an avian flu, can genetically mix with a human based flu, when a person contracts both at the same time, providing the deadlier avian version of the flu with a method to easily spread from human to human.
I in no way want to downplay the danger that H5N1 or future flu viruses may pose. But the fact is, this is simply normal and has been normal for at least hundreds of years. Very deadly strains of flu rear their ugly heads every few decades. Ease of travel has simply made it more likely to turn them into pandemics instead of localized epidemics.
1. Influenza is a respiratory disease caused by a virus that has affected both man and animals for centuries
2. There are three types of Influenza-A, B and C, but the Type A viruses affect man and animals and have produced the widespread outbreaks of disease documented in the past
3. Avian influenza or influenza in birds has been the source of the human pandemic (world wide spread of disease) in the past century.
4. Wild birds (waterfowl) spread the avian influenza virus to commercial or domestic poultry.
5. There are two forms of avian or "bird" flu. First is the low pathological form which produces a series of minor disease symptoms in birds. There is also a high pathological version, which is a very serious disease and will result in high death loss in birds.
6. When avian influenza occurs in birds it can sometimes spread to other species especially pigs. It can also mutate or change and become infective to humans.
7. Historically several outbreaks of the disease have occurred. When the virus spreads worldwide it is called a pandemic. Examples are the 1918 outbreak (sometimes called the "Spanish flu" because of its perceived origin), and others in 1957 and 1968 were a result of this "mixing" and mutation (or change) in a bird flu virus.
8. In 1997, the bird flu that occurred in Hong Kong changed and spread to humans without "mixing" in another species. The major concern here is that this subtype of virus had never occurred in humans before, so there is no natural immunity or vaccine available.
9. Avian or "bird" flu has continued to break out in various Southeast Asian countries and has recently spread to Russia.
10. World health officials and epidemiologist (Doctors who track disease development and spread) are very concerned that as this virus spreads, there is no vaccine and people will be very susceptible to this disease.
more scientific type facts:
1. Avian influenza is a disease in birds that comes in two forms-low pathogenic and highly pathogenic. Low path AI can circulate through bird populations and mutate into high path AI
2. Avian influenza is carried by waterfowl with little disease or consequence, but when passed to domestic poultry can cause devastating high morbidity and mortality.
3. Previous pandemics (1918, 1957, 1968) in humans were sourced from avian influenza virus
4. There are three types of Influenza virus-A, B and C. Type A viruses are the most deadly and are classified by proteins on the virus capsid H (hemagluttinin) and N (neuraminidase). There are 15 H subtypes and 9 N subtypes.
5. The virus in 1918 (Spanish flu-because of its perceived origin) was H1N1 and recent outbreaks of H5N1 are occurring in birds in Southeast Asia. Human were infected during these outbreaks with a high (up to 30-50%) mortality rate.
6. This H5 (Hong Kong, 1997) subtype was found to pass directly to humans for the first time in history. Previously, another species (swine) was needed to "mix" the virus before the infection in humans could occur.
7. Mixing of the H5N1 virus with another common human influenza virus would produce an easily transmissible virus to which humans have no natural immunity.
8. Vaccine is not available for H5N1 serotype and producing adequate quantities in advance does not guarantee that it will prevent the spread of the virus. Our current annual flu vaccine will not cover this potential disease.
9. Some countries are instead stockpiling influenza treatment drugs (M2 inhibitors and neuraminidase inhibitors) such as Tamiflu to "treat" early signs and symptoms.
10. Monitoring of avian influenza outbreaks by world health officials especially in Asia and countries with little infrastructure for animal disease surveillance is important in the detection and prevention of a human pandemic.
by Pete Davies. It covers both the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed up to 40 million people as well as more recent outbreaks and current projects in the field.
www.themeatrix.com
there are other disease, besides flu, that have come from 'strains' on animal populations caused by human activity. such as marburg virus, aids, etc. industrialized or not, it doesnt really matter.
...'Agribusiness-Caused Chicken Flu' or maybe even plain old 'Chicken Flu' because the chicken farmers of the world have a lot of clout. Colonel Sanders has a lot of clout.
"Eat shit and die!"
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
Charoen Phokphand (CP) is an agricultural conglomerate of Thailand which has many questionable practices. They keep huge poultry farms, also they act as the wholesaler and reseller for small poultry farms.
CP started out in the early 1990s and is now virtually a monopoly for poultry products on the thai market. They expanded into China a few years ago, I'm not sure if they are in Vietnam. The Thai govt, under Thaksin, was a big promoter for CP, they consistently denied the existence or danger of bird flu...when people started questioning their policy, Thaksin had chicken served at his cabinet luncheon, Thaksin even held a big free chicken buffett at a park in Bangkok.
Chickens in your backyard are exposed to both humans and wild birds.
Industrial farming keeps the birds inside. They might never even see sunshine, never mind having contact with wild birds.
The guy clearly ignores the facts to push his political agenda. He'd be demanding that all farms everywhere be factory-style if he were honest.