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Timely Book On Bird Flu

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the take-care-out-there dept.

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."

4 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Antibiotic resistant??? by the_humeister · · Score: 4, Informative
    The book is especially timely given yesterday's news that a new, antibiotics-resistant variant of H5N1 has been detected in China
    It's a virus! Antibiotics are for bacterial-type infections. A vaccine is not an antibiotic.
    1. Re:Antibiotic resistant??? by Abcd1234 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh for god sake, who asked you to inject facts into what is clearly an article targeted at fear mongering?

  2. Captain Obvious breaks it down again by jmorris42 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The book is especially timely given yesterday's news that a new, antibiotics-resistant variant of H5N1 has been detected in China."


    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.

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    Democrat delenda est
  3. The researchers... by chuck · · Score: 4, Funny

    The researchers collected 53,220 fecal samples from chickens, geese and ducks in poultry markets in six Chinese provinces between July 2005 and June 2006.

    I'm glad I'm a programmer.
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    My Freakin Blog