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...late April, Dominguez Trunnell, who was eight months pregnant, became ill with what would eventually be confirmed as H1N1 flu. While the vast majority of victims of the virus - there have been more than 4,700 probable and confirmed cases in the U.S. - have recovered without complications, Dominguez Trunnell grew sicker, eventually being placed on a ventilator. Early this month Dominguez Trunnell passed away, weeks after her baby daughter was delivered via cesarean section. "She was a fun and caring person," Trunnell tells TIME. "She didn't deserve this." (See pictures of H1N1 flu hitting Mexico...
Trunnell's petition seeks to investigate claims that the H1N1 outbreak began in Smithfield's massive pork operation in La Gloria and that the virus may have been caused in part by the conditions under which the farm operates, which the petition terms "horrifically unsanitary...
...following through with a wrongful-death suit against Smithfield Foods, it will most likely make legal history. No one has ever tried to hold a corporation responsible for the inadvertent creation of an infectious disease. Trunnell and his lawyer, Marc Rosenthal, do not claim that Smithfield purposely bred the virus, but rather that its Perote operation, which raises some 1 million pigs annually in close quarters, established the necessary conditions for the virus to arise. If Smithfield had taken better care of its farm, the petition claims, H1N1 might never have been introduced to the world...
...think that the conditions down there are a recipe for disaster," says Rosenthal. "This type of virus is more likely to evolve and mutate in this much filth and putrescence. It's more than a mere coincidence that the first cases emerged right there in La Gloria." (Read five things you need to know about H1N1...
...date, 34 countries have reported 7,520 confirmed cases of H1N1 infection, including 60 deaths in Mexico. In the U.S., the death toll reached four on Friday, and scientists studying the virus say the novel flu virus appears to be about twice as contagious as the regular seasonal flu. Although the "H1N1 virus tends to cause very mild illness in otherwise healthy people," according to a World Health Organization statement on Monday, "the youth of patients with severe or lethal infections is a striking feature of these early outbreaks...