prophets or profiteers?
- From: "georgia" <jwissmille@xxxxxxx>
- Date: 28 Apr 2006 19:46:05 -0700
"........ Science is best served by careful study, not by
speculation and
hysterical predictions. It makes far more sense for international
efforts to
focus on controlling this disease in birds, rather than sounding a
hasty alarm
for humans.
When our public health officials try too hard to warn us against the
worst
case, too often they forget that they are really scientists and not
prophets...
[some may be profiteers ?]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-siegel6apr06,0,3341586.st
ory?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
Bird flu and Chicken LittlesFrom the Los Angeles Times
The science may not support public health officials' dire predictions.
By Marc Siegel
DR. MARC SIEGEL is an associate professor of medicine at the New York
University School of Medicine and the author of "Bird Flu: Everything
You Need to
Know About the Next Pandemic."
April 6, 2006
IS BIRD FLU going to transform itself into a massive killer of humans?
Or is
it simply going to fade away?
If you listen to many of our health experts, you would already be
cordoning
off your house. Last month, Tennessee virologist Dr. Robert Webster,
known for
his research efforts as "the flu hunter," insisted on national
television that
"society just can't accept the idea that 50% of the population could
die."
This hysterical prophecy from a serious scientist compounded previous
statements made by Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National
Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases, who said bird flu is "a time bomb waiting to
go off,"
and Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control
and
Prevention, who agrees with most experts that regarding a serious avian
flu
pandemic, "it's not a question of if, it's a question of when." Even
the cautious
secretary of Health and Human Services, Mike Leavitt, recently let slip
the
alarmist notion that is was time to talk about closing schools and
stockpiling
tuna fish and powdered milk.
But the science on the H5N1bird flu virus may not support these
conclusions.
In fact, two important studies published just last month in top science
journals show that this bird flu virus is still multiple mutations away
from being
able to pass easily among humans. This bird flu appears to be better
absorbed
by the deep pockets of bird lungs, whereas human flu is absorbed by the
cells
of our upper airways.
The kind of real science found in these studies takes place in the
laboratory
trenches, not in the news conference or the cable news sound bite. In
fact,
the researchers who have been studying bird flu the longest and know
the most
about it are veterinarians.
Dr. David Swayne, director of the Southeast Poultry Laboratory at the
U.S.
Department of Agriculture, has worked on avian influenza for many
years. He
takes all highly pathogenic bird flus seriously, including H5N1, but he
feels they
can most often be controlled. Swayne told me that H5N1 might still be
eradicated in birds with the help of "better diagnostic tools and
improved strategies
to protect birds from infection."
Dr. Elizabeth Krushinskie, president of the American Assn. of Avian
Pathologists, told me that "there is no selective [genetic] pressure to
drive [H5N1]
toward humans. It could just as easily move away."
In its current form, this flu is far more deadly to birds than to
humans. In
1997 in Hong Kong, where the first human cases appeared, more than 10%
of the
thousands of human contacts screened developed antibodies to the virus
but
never got sick. This means that even in regions where bird flu is
spreading, it
is very difficult for people to get sick from it. Sneezing and coughing
doesn't
transmit it, and cooking poultry kills it.
Science is best served by careful study, not by speculation and
hysterical
predictions. It makes far more sense for international efforts to focus
on
controlling this disease in birds, rather than sounding a hasty alarm
for humans.
When our public health officials try too hard to warn us against the
worst
case, too often they forget that they are really scientists and not
prophets.
.
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