Word: avian
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...flip side to 1918, a reminder that there is always a risk of overreacting to a pandemic threat. But the decision to crash test a vaccination program was based on the best available science at the time. (We know now that the 1918 flu was an avian virus, not a swine one.) While the 1976 program was an expensive and embarrassing mistake, it also underscored just how difficult it is to decide how to prepare for an influenza pandemic, whose schedule and severity we have virtually no way of predicting. "No one really knows what's going to happen," says...
...hardest. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has collected just $30 million of the $175 million it says is needed to control the disease in birds in Southeast Asia, though the World Bank's announcement last week that it will issue emergency loans to nations struggling with avian flu should help. As the World Health Organization has repeatedly stated, containing bird flu on the ground, in animals, is still the best way to prevent a flu pandemic. But paying for flu surveillance in Cambodia isn't going to calm scared American voters, or earn Bush back the political capital...
...less developed countries are very vulnerable to the avian-influenza pandemic that is expected to spread around the world [Oct. 17]. Those countries lack the means to fight the flu. There are millions of chickens in small areas like the island of Java in Indonesia. Should the flocks become infected and the bird-flu virus mutate and spread to human beings, it would put Indonesia's 220 million people at risk...
Everyone seems so alarmed by the outbreak of avian flu [Oct. 17]. Maybe it's time we stopped and looked at the way we raise animals. Seven to nine chickens crammed into a cage the size of a microwave oven is a virus time bomb waiting to explode. Caged chickens stand in their own feces and are never able to stretch their wings. Many have been debeaked, and some have chronic pain and infections. We should ban the inhumane standards of factory farming. I believe that avian flu is the quiet revenge of those millions of chickens, ducks and geese...
...fears about a bird flu pandemic continue to mount, Harvard is preparing for a possible influenza outbreak and increasing its supply of seasonal flu vaccines. The bird flu mutation, avian influenza A (H5N1), has killed more than 60 people in Asia over the past two years, according to the World Health Organization. Recently, the virus spread to birds in eastern Europe. Avian influenza A is currently only transmitted to humans via contact with birds. However, an influenza pandemic could begin if the virus mutated, enabling it to spread from person to person easily, according to the Centers for Disease Control...