Word: pigged
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...attempt to answer that question, but one way to begin is to look at where the virus originated. Epidemiologists appear to be homing in on a possible ground zero in the Mexican Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, in a town called Perote, which is home to a large pig farm owned by the U.S. company Smithfield Foods. Flu-like cases began popping up there in early April, before the first confirmed case in Mexico on April...
...truth is that even though the virus is referred to as swine flu, researchers do not yet know for sure that the A/H1N1 virus actually originated in pigs. There's been no evidence yet of pigs getting sick in either Mexico or the U.S. (Despite several countries' bans on pork imports, it's important to remember that the disease cannot be contracted by eating pork.) The original reservoir for flu viruses is actually wild birds, which can spread infection to domestic birds and people - as we saw with the H5N1 avian flu in Asia - and to pigs. Pigs make particularly...
...recent years, since the ongoing H5N1 bird-flu virus first surfaced, health officials have focused mostly on Asia as the breeding ground for the world's next pandemic flu virus. But Daszak points out that Mexico, where people, pigs and poultry can exist in close proximity, is an overlooked hot spot for new viruses. Given the booming global livestock trade - more than 1.5 billion live animals have been shipped to the U.S. from all over the world in the past decade - it's possible that the A/H1N1 virus originated in an Asian bird that was exported to Mexico, where...
...make a vaccine, says it is still "looking very intently" at a swine flu vaccine, but it has not yet given the green light to scale up production. In the event that it does, either in response to the current outbreak or down the road when the next pig-to-people flu causes massive illness, they may have better ways than they did in '76 to battle...
Pity the poor pig. The otherwise estimable mammal has never had a very good rep - something about the mud, the snout, the oink...