[PROVE] Some don't buy bird flu threat

[Guest guest]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3881291.html

" ... This disease is going to fizzle out, be forgotten in the near future and be

replaced by another 'potential worldwide threat. "

" The greatest problem isn't influenza — it's fear of influenza. "

May 23, 2006, 1:29AM

As the dire predictions of a pandemic mount, skeptics warn of the dangers of

overreaction

Some don't buy bird flu threat

By TODD ACKERMAN

Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

For months, the warnings have been relentless: Bird flu could jump species and

kill tens of millions of people, a pandemic to rival the 1918 Spanish flu.

Economies would collapse and governments risk catastrophe if they don't put

together elaborate contingency plans.

Not everyone is convinced, however. A small group of skeptics says the warnings

are just a lot of hype, scare talk that does more harm than good to the public

health. Such doomsday predictions go well beyond good science and siphon money

and attention from more important threats, they say.

" It's a great story, a disease that can wipe out mankind as we know it, " says

Dr. Butcher, a University of Florida veterinarian specializing in avian

diseases. " Fortunately, the facts are contrary to what's being reported. This

disease is going to fizzle out, be forgotten in the near future and be replaced

by another 'potential worldwide threat.' "

That view may have received a boost last week when the United Nations' chief

pandemic flu coordinator confirmed that the flu virus known as H5N1 largely has

been contained in the Asian countries where it first hit.

Public health officials were quick to warn it would be premature to declare

victory. Dismissive of those who play down the threat, they argue it would be

irresponsible not to plan for a worst-case scenario.

H5N1, they note, shares many genetic features with the Spanish flu, according to

a research team that reconstructed the horrific 1918 virus — except it's even

more lethal. The new virus has killed nearly 57 percent of its 217 confirmed

human carriers. The 1918 pandemic paralyzed society, but the resulting 20

million to 50 million deaths represented just 2 percent of those infected.

In addition to common flu symptoms like fever and cough, those infected with the

H5N1 virus can develop viral pneumonia or other life-threatening complications

within days. The virus, to date, is believed only to have been transmitted to

humans through direct contact with diseased birds.

Virus transmission

The most recent reported deaths attributed to H5N1 were those of six

Indonesians, five of them in an extended family. The deaths, reported last week,

initially were investigated as a " cluster " that health experts feared could mean

the virus was mutating into a form more easily passed between humans. World

Health Organization investigators have all but ruled out human-to-human

transmission, saying the virus likely was caught from infected animals.

It's the idea of easy transmission between humans that brings out the

apocalyptic visions. One researcher went so far as to suggest half the world's

population could die in such a pandemic. U.S. Secretary of Health & Human

Services Leavitt advised Americans to stockpile cans of tuna fish and

powdered milk in case of an outbreak. And officials have called for more than

100 million doses of a still-to-be-developed vaccine for the virus to be made

available to Americans.

Contrarians such as Butcher say it's all a bit much, considering that some

experts doubt the current lethal form of the virus will ever jump to humans .

They also note that the three pandemics of the last century claimed successively

fewer lives. The last, in 1968, killed 34,000 people, fewer than the number who

succumb each year to seasonal flu.

Bird flu, they argue, is just the latest in a line of overhyped scares that

include anthrax, West Nile virus, smallpox and SARS, which taken together claim

a mere fraction of the lives lost every year to, say, pneumonia.

The skeptics warn of the dangers of overreaction, citing 1976's swine flu

debacle, when more than 40 million people received a vaccine against a new pig

virus that, ultimately, never took hold. The virus killed one person, a military

recruit whose speedy death ignited the crash program. But as many as 1,000

people who were inoculated developed a paralyzing nerve condition; 32 died. The

public relations nightmare and lawsuits against the government helped drive many

drug companies away from making flu vaccines at all.

One reason some remain unconvinced of the new virus's potential transmissibility

is because it has infected so few people to date. Since 1998, hundreds of

millions of chickens in Asia have been infected with the virus. Millions of

people lived with the diseased birds, but, as of last Friday, 217 had become

infected. Of those, 123 died.

The high fatality rate also is suspect, according to the naysayers. No one knows

how many people in close contact with domesticated birds may have picked up the

virus, but never got sick or only showed mild symptoms, and, thus, never

reported the disease.

The current flu virus, H5N1, is what is infecting birds. That virus, however,

infects humans by lodging deep in the lungs, and, thus, isn't likely to be

spread by coughing or sneezing.

The fear among scientists is that the avian flu strain will mix with a human

flu, producing a new, easily transmissible virus against which people have no

immunities.

" It would be devastating if it gained the ability to spread easily from person

to person, " said Dr. Keitel, a molecular virologist at Baylor College of

Medicine. " Its fatality rate in humans is unprecedented, as is the extent and

severity of the outbreaks in poultry. "

Differing views

But Ewald, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of

Louisville, said such pathogens would lose their virulence, a law of natural

selection ignored by those who fear the worst-case scenarios.

" Everything we know about evolution says pathogens have to become more mild to

keep their host mobile, " Ewald said. " If they're so virulent the host can't pass

them on, they don't survive. "

The exception, he said, occurs in " disease factories " — environments where

people immobilized by illness can easily transmit a virulent pathogen to new

hosts — which is what happened on World War I's Western Front with the Spanish

flu. Hospitals, trains and trenches packed with deathly ill and healthy soldiers

facilitated the disease's lethal spread.

Public health officials respond that researchers still don't know exactly what

made the Spanish flu so deadly, particularly to the young and healthy. They say

they can't afford to do little and hope time proves Ewald's theory correct.

Are grants driving hype?

Some critics see a different " agenda " behind the public concern about bird flu —

funding. Butcher says President Bush's $7.1 billion flu pandemic plan means a

bonanza of grant money for researchers and the justification of the budgets and

existence of agencies such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the World

Health Organization.

The bait is not taken by many officials most concerned about the bird flu

threat. One such, Dr. C.J. s, director of biodefense at the University of

Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, calls the more vocal skeptics

" well-intentioned folks reacting to media hype. "

Some mostly just wish the money wasn't being directed so single-mindedly to the

new virus. With nearly 150 different strains of flu viruses with the potential

to cause a pandemic, New York University School of Medicine internist Dr. Marc

Siegel said he'd like to see more effort aimed at general pandemic preparation,

such as developing better methods for making vaccines, and less given to

panic-inducing rhetoric.

" I'm concerned that the public discussion about bird flu, the new bug du jour,

is so weighted with end-of-the-world terms that it's causing a kind of

hysteria, " said Siegel, author of Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About

the Next Pandemic. " The greatest problem isn't influenza — it's fear of

influenza. "

todd.ackerman@...

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Dawn

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