factory farming of food animals is a threat to human health -- the
threat of "bird flu" is a good reason to drop mass production
of farm animals that spreads disease - vegan diets would also
significantly reduce energy and water overconsumption
the Homeland Security Act passed with little dissent in Congress provides
surreal powers for Bush/Cheney to round up populations, close down transportation
systems, forcibly inject you and yours with experimental treatments (without
liability to anyone) - let's hope some sanity prevails and the nightmare
biowar scenario is averted
public health prevention programs would be a much better expenditure
of money and effort than more wars to destroy entire populations whose
main "crime" is live near fossil energy resources
Fowl play: The poultry industry's central role in the bird flu crisis
GRAIN | February 2006
Backyard or free-range poultry are not fuelling the current wave of
bird flu outbreaks stalking large parts of the world. The deadly H5N1
strain of bird flu is essentially a problem of industrial poultry practices.
Its epicentre is the factory farms of China and Southeast Asia and --
while wild birds can carry the disease, at least for short distances
-- its main vector is the highly self-regulated transnational poultry
industry, which sends the products and waste of its farms around the
world through a multitude of channels. Yet small poultry farmers and
the poultry biodiversity and local food security that they sustain are
suffering badly from the fall-out. To make matters worse, governments
and international agencies, following mistaken assumptions about how
the disease spreads and amplifies, are pursuing measures to force poultry
indoors and further industrialise the poultry sector. In practice, this
means the end of the small-scale poultry farming that provides food
and livelihoods to hundreds of millions of families across the world.
This paper presents a fresh perspective on the bird flu story that challenges
current assumptions and puts the focus back where it should be: on the
transnational poultry industry.
.... Finally we must consider the question of epidemic disease, which
can be thought of as a consequence of many of the problems mentioned
above: overpopulation, population movements due to climate change, poverty,
military mischief, even destabilized oil markets. A worldwide influenza
epidemic on the order of the 1918 Spanish Flu is overdue. The world
barely missed one such catastrophe two years ago when a chicken flu
broke out in Hong Kong and was contained only by mass extermination
at the giant factory farms where the disease spawned. Factory farming
itself may be a menace to human life. I know intelligent people who
believe that mad cow disease and other Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies
(TSEs) will decimate the human population of Europe over the next forty
years. Global warming is sure to increase the range and lethality of
current malaria strains, and other diseases (e.g., west Nile virus).
People who are starving tend to process a lot of rats. Bubonic plague
still exists. AIDS is obviously rampant in sub-Saharan Africa and becoming
worse in Asia. Drug-resistant tuberculosis runs wild in Russia.
SPECIAL REPORT -- STRATFOR
Stratfor subscribers have been sending us a steady river of requests
for our opinion on the bird flu situation. Although we are not medical
experts, among our sources are those who are. And here is what we have
been able to conclude based on their input and our broader analysis
of the bird flu threat: Calm down.
Now let us qualify that: Since December 2003, the H5N1 bird flu virus
-- which has caused all the ruckus -- has been responsible for the documented
infection of 121 people, 91 one of whom caught the virus in Vietnam.
In all cases where information on the chain of infection has been confirmed,
the virus was transmitted either by repeated close contact with fowl
or via the ingestion of insufficiently cooked chicken products. In not
a single case has human-to-human communicability been confirmed. So
long as that remains the case, there is no bird flu threat to the human
population of places such as Vietnam at large, much less the United
States. ....
Yes, H5N1 does show a propensity to mutate; and, yes, sooner or later
another domesticated animal disease will cross over into the human population
(most common human diseases have such origins). But there is no scientifically
plausible reason to expect such a crossover to be imminent.
But if you are trying to find something to worry about, you should at
least worry about the right thing.
A virus can mutate in any host, and pound for pound, the mutations that
are of most interest to humanity are obviously those that occur within
a human host. That means that each person who catches H5N1 due to a
close encounter of the bird kind in effect becomes a sort of laboratory
that could foster a mutation and that could have characteristics that
would allow H5N1 to be communicable to other humans. Without such a
specific mutation, bird flu is a problem for turkeys, but not for the
non-turkey farmers among us.
But we are talking about a grand total of 115 people catching the bug
over the course of the past three years. That does not exactly produce
great odds for a virus -- no matter how genetically mutable -- to evolve
successfully into a human-communicable strain. And bear in mind that
the first-ever human case of H5N1 was not in 2003 but in 1997. There
is not anything fundamentally new in this year's bird flu scare.
A more likely vector, therefore, would be for H5N1 to leap into a species
of animal that bears similarities to human immunology yet lives in quarters
close enough to encourage viral spread -- and lacks the capacity to
complete detailed questionnaires about family health history.
The most likely candidate is the pig. On many farms, birds and pigs
regularly intermingle, allowing for cross-infection, and similar pig-human
biology means that pigs serving in the role as mutation incubator are
statistically more likely than the odd Vietnamese raw-chicken eater
to generate a pandemic virus.
And once the virus mutates into a form that is pig-pig transferable,
a human pandemic is only one short mutation away. Put another way, a
bird flu pandemic among birds is manageable. A bird flu pandemic among
pigs is not, and is nearly guaranteed to become a human pandemic.
Senate Democrats Seek $4 Billion to Fight Bird Flu
By Richard Cowan
Reuters
Friday 30 September 2005
Washington - A group of Senate Democrats on Thursday sought to add nearly
$4 billion to the US fight against the deadly avian flu, with most of
the money to be used to stock up on an anti-viral drug.
But a Senate vote on the measure might be delayed until next week and
an influential Republican, Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, said he would try
to kill the effort.
Avian flu among flocks in Asia has been growing for several years and
outbreaks have been spotted in parts of Russia. So far, 65 people in Asia
who are thought to have had close contact with infected birds have died
since 2003.
Scientists fear that a mutation of the H5N1 virus could make it transmissible
among humans, sparking a worldwide epidemic that could kill millions of
people.
"It's the midnight hour. We have to get moving on it now, not next
year, not after some study group in the White House bangs this thing around
for another three months," said Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat.
Harkin, with the backing of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada
Democrat, wants the government to spend nearly $3.1 billion to stockpile
enough doses of an anti-viral drug for half of the US population.
Harkin said there are only 2 million doses on hand now, enough for 1 percent
of the population.
'We Ought to Wait'
Two anti-viral drugs have been shown to ease avian flu symptoms and maybe
even prevent it. Switzerland's Roche Holding AG makes Tamiflu, known generically
as oseltamivir, and GlaxoSmithKline makes Relenza, or zanamivir.
Under the Democrats' plan, other funds would be used to increase global
surveillance for the disease, increase spending on a vaccine and help
states and cities prepare for a large outbreak.
But Stevens said he feared a Senate floor fight over the $4 billion that
would be attached to a fiscal 2006 funding bill for the Defense Department
containing $50 billion in emergency money for the war in Iraq.
"To compare the money we have in this bill to fund them (US troops
in Iraq) with funding a proposal to deal with virus ... that has not yet
become a threat to human beings I think is wrong," Stevens said.
"We ought to wait for the scientists to tell us what needs to be
done," Stevens added.
International organizations have urged the United States and other countries
to be more aggressive against the avian flu outbreak.
A UN official on Thursday said a worldwide drive would be launched to
combat a pandemic that could kill half of those infected.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, a surgeon, said he has
called on Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt to complete
a national preparedness plan.
It was unclear whether Frist would support Harkin's $4 billion proposal,
which comes at a time when congressional Republicans are trying to cut
domestic spending to help pay for hurricane relief.
WHO Tries to Play Down Expert Warning of 150 Million Deaths from Flu
Pandemic
By Jeremy Laurance
The Independent UK
Saturday 01 October 2005
The World Health Organisation has moved to play down a cataclysmic warning
by one of its own officials that a pandemic caused by the bird flu virus
ravaging poultry flocks in the Far East could kill as many as 150 million
people.
The prediction came from David Nabarro, a senior WHO expert on infectious
diseases, who was appointed on Thursday as UN coordinator for avian and
human influenza. He said the next pandemic could claim from five million
up to 150 million lives.
Dr. Nabarro called on political leaders to take immediate action to halt
a human pandemic, and said that the higher death figure could result if
governments failed to act now.
A WHO spokesman at the agency's Geneva headquarters made a surprise appearance
yesterday at the UN regular media briefing in an effort to put Dr. Nabarro's
comments in context.
While he did not say the 150 million prediction was wrong, or even implausible,
he said it was impossible to estimate how many could die. But he reiterated
the WHO calculation that countries should prepare for 7.4 million deaths
globally, arguing that was "the most reasoned position".
Scientists have made all sorts of predictions, ranging from fewer than
two million to 360 million. Others have quoted 150 million. Last year,
WHO's chief for the Asia-Pacific region predicted 100 million deaths,
but until now that was the highest figure publicly mentioned by a WHO
official.
Bird flu has been sweeping through poultry flocks and wild birds in Asia
since 2003, killing millions, and has infected more than 100 humans, of
whom more than 60 have died. This has proved that the strain of avian
flu circulating in the Far East - H5N1 - is lethal to humans, with a death
rate of more than 50 per cent.
The fear is that the virus may mutate so it becomes easily transmissible
from human to human, triggering a lethal pandemic that would spread around
the world.
Ordinary winter flu, which causes outbreaks in Britain and elsewhere each
year, is one of the most infectious diseases known, and spreads rapidly
among populations. If avian flu were to acquire the same level of infectivity,
nothing would halt its spread around the globe.
In the UK, Sir Liam Donaldson, the Government's chief medical officer,
said it was a "biological inevitability" that the next flu pandemic
will cause serious harm to the health of people in Britain.
Tens of thousands of people will die in the pandemic which could strike
as early as this winter or not for another decade, he warned. It was not
a question of whether it would strike but when, Sir Liam said.
On BBC Radio 4, he said that contingency plans for the UK had not changed
and were still based on 50,000 possible deaths. Asked if the UK was ready
to face the threat, he said: "I don't think I would ever want to
be as bold as to claim that."
He added: "It's inevitable that when the flu pandemic comes, and
we don't know whether that will be next winter or even in five or 10 years'
time, that it will have a very serious impact on the health of our country.
That's a biological inevitability."
The UK has ordered 14.6 million doses of Tamiflu, an antiviral drug that
cannot prevent avian flu but can lessen the symptoms, of which 900,000
doses have so far been delivered.
"Those won't eliminate the problem but for people who get it, it
should reduce the severity of their attack and it should prevent many
people from dying," Sir Liam said.
WHO officials say the only hope of halting the next pandemic would be
to snuff it out at the start by detecting an outbreak early and treating
the 20,000 people closest to the centre of the outbreak to prevent its
spread.
The WHO is stockpiling three million doses of anti-viral drugs to be flown
to any part of the world to be used in that eventuality.
www.canada.com/health/story.html?id=246093d6-d88d-47de-96a4-f74e933e17c8 Pandemic could create serious and sustained food
shortages, expert warns
Helen Branswell
Canadian Press
June 20, 2005
www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/02/bird_flu/
Bird flu: we're all going to die
By Charles Arthur
Published Thursday 2nd June 2005 11:25 GMT
The theme of the person awaking from a deep sleep or coma to find
a world utterly changed is a popular one in science fiction. From John
Wyndham's book The Day of The Triffids through The Omega Man to the
recent film 28 Days Later, the trope of the man arising from his hospital
bed to find that nothing is as it was has become well-worn.
That's fine - as long as it remains just a story. But if - when - a
flu pandemic comes, and millions of people die around the world over
a period of months, the reality will be one of two alternatives. It's
either going to be like those films, with videoconferencing suddenly
all the rage, local farm produce making a big profit, empty supermarket
shelves (you have to ship the oil, and distribute the fuel, but can
the Armed Forces really do all that?), tumbleweed blowing in the streets,
a medieval attitude to anyone not from "around here".
Or else governments will impose a police state that will make all the
ID cards and airport checks look like a tea party. You'd not be allowed
to move anywhere without showing off a vaccination certificate. (Sure,
you'd get those on the black market, and they'd cost more than £300,
but would you really want them? If you're not vaccinated would you really
want to travel among people who might be carriers?) Or it might be both
at once.
One more thing. You might well be one of those millions who die in such
a pandemic. If you travel to work on public transport; if colleagues
in your company travel by air to Asia; if you're travelling abroad through
a busy airport. You'll probably touch someone or share air with someone
who's infected. The premise of Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys will become
reality.
You may think this is overblown. But discussion of the possibility of
a flu pandemic has fallen out of the news. And as the security consultant
Bruce Schneier says:
"One of the things I routinely tell people is that if it's in the
news, don't worry about it. By definition, 'news' means that it hardly
ever happens. If a risk is in the news, then it's probably not worth
worrying about. When something is no longer reported - automobile deaths,
domestic violence - when it's so common that it's not news, then you
should start worrying."
The risks posed by an outbreak of flu passed from chickens in the Far
East, in coutries such as Vietnam and Thailand, burst into the news
in February. But now they've passed out of the news. Since then we've
had more important things, like the Crazy Frog ringtone, to concern
us.
Time to worry. And the scientists are. In fact, they're edgier than
I've seen them since the BSE outbreak was in its earliest days and people
were wondering if it might pass to humans. Quite a few scientists stopped
eating beef at that point. Oh, you didn't know?
Now, their reaction is to write papers and watch what's happening, very
closely. If you read the scientific journals (we do, so you don't have
to) the articles are piling up. Last week the journal Nature pulled
together an entire online resource on the threat of avian flu.
That's the trouble with scientists. They get an idea into their heads
- CFCs and ozone, carbon dioxide emissions and the greenhouse effect,
the transmission of BSE to other species such as humans - and they worry
away at it until they determine what the answer and the mechanism is.
Here's what's they're worrying about now. The First World War killed
seven million people. But the strain of flu that followed it - incubated,
experts reckon, in pigs that were kept near the front lines to help
feed the troops - killed up to 100 million, helped by the movement of
troops returning home from the war.
Pandemics come around, on average, about every 70 years or so. There
were small ones in 1957 and 1968/9, when "Hong Kong flu" -
strain H1N1 - spread around the world, and one million died. That was
tiny by pandemic standards. The scientists reckon we're overdue for
an infectious, fatal strain of flu, one which can pass from human to
human by the usual methods - sneezing or contact.
There's already a deadly strain of flu around - "chicken flu",
better known to the scientists by the strain of flu virus that causes
it: H5N1. But it only passes from chickens to humans, not from from
person to person. If it could do that, it would have the potential to
turn pandemic.
But maybe it already can. There have already been a couple of cases
of deaths from H5N1 where the only logical pathway is human-to-human.
The UK government announced in February that it will buy in thousands
of doses of Tamiflu as part of the UK Influenza Pandemic Contingency
Plan (PDF, 160kB).
Too bad - the latest results (reported by New Scientist; limited-time
free access) suggest that Tamiflu isn't effective against H5N1. And
anyway, New Scientist reports, the UK's order for 14.6 million five-day
courses of Tamiflu treatment will take its patent owners Roche two years
to fulfil. The company is still trying to develop ways to synthesise
it from scratch.
The consequences of a really big, fatal flu epidemic on modern society
are hard to imagine, partly because they're so enormous. Air passengers
would be the first vector of infection, followed by the people who travelled
with them in the train or Underground train or coach from the airport,
followed by the family and friends of those people. Give it a few days
and people would be falling ill, then over the next weeks dying.
If the strain is new and unexpected, there wouldn't be time to produce
enough vaccine to treat it. According to a New England Journal of Medicine
article by Dr Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis
- who is also director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research
and Policy - titled "Preparing for the Next Pandemic", the
1950s-era methods of producing vaccines means we would need (ironically
enough) one chicken egg per person to produce the vaccine, plus six
months to culture it.
"The global economy would come to a halt, and since we could not
expect appropriate vaccines to be available for many months and we have
very limited stockpiles of antiviral drugs, we would be facing a 1918-like
scenario," notes Dr Osterholm, who calculates that given current
technology, we could vaccinate about 500 million people, tops - about
14 per cent of the world population.
Of course, most of those will be in the developed world. But are you
sure you'd be one? Are you in the Armed Forces? Do you or your business
count as an essential service? If you're not involved with the electricity,
water, fuel distribution, phone or gas industries, then probably not.
"And owing to our global 'just-in-time delivery' economy, we would
have no surge capacity for health care, food supplies, and many other
products and services," Dr Osterholm adds.
Let's have some more numbers from Dr Osterholm, just to encourage you.
He writes: "It is sobering to realize that in 1968, when the most
recent influenza pandemic occurred, the virus emerged in a China that
had a human population of 790 million, a pig population of 5.2 million,
and a poultry population of 12.3 million; today, these populations number
1.3 billion, 508 million, and 13 billion, respectively. Similar changes
have occurred in the human and animal populations of other Asian countries,
creating an incredible mixing vessel for viruses. Given this reality,
as well as the exponential growth in foreign travel during the past
50 years, we must accept that a pandemic is coming - although whether
it will be caused by H5N1 or by another novel strain remains to be seen."
All this has been noted by virologists and disease experts around the
world. But what can we do? For one thing, listen to what they're saying,
and put some pressure on the politicians who are ignoring this threat,
in the hope it will go away. Climate change may be a greater threat
than terrorism, but a flu pandemic is a more immediate threat than either.
Or, as Canada's deputy chief public health officer, Dr Paul Gully, put
it to the Toronto Star: "Frankly the crisis could for all we know
have started last night in some village in Southeast Asia. We don't
have any time to waste and even if we did have some time, the kinds
of things we need to do will take years. Right now, the best we can
do is try to survive it. We need a Manhattan Project yesterday."
Let's hope they got started. Now, where's the number of that forger
for my vaccination certificate? ®
