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The ultimate weapon of mass destruction
H5N1 may be out of the headlines for now but the threat is greater than ever, says Robert Fox
The threat to this country from a pandemic caused by bird flu or some such virus is greater than the threat from international terrorism in the view of Gordon Brown and his Downing Street advisors. This is why pandemics are ranked alongside terrorism and other major global ills in the National Security Strategy unveiled last month.
On the face of it, the briefing seems alarmist. The World Health Organisation has recorded only 238 deaths proven to be from a human variant of the H5N1 virus. Yet scientists and security specialists are more in agreement on the risk of a pandemic than on climate change and global warming.
The argument is based on a hypothesis, a short-odds scientific bet. Sir David King, who's just stepped down as the UK's Chief Scientific Adviser, puts it like this: "It is more a question of when rather than if the H5N1 virus mutates into a virulent human form. So far we have noted more than 20 mutations of the virus in only a few years."
His view is supported by every public health official or doctor I have met in recent months. Only last week, three former heads of the Defence Ministry and the Joint Intelligence Committee told me without hesitation that they thought the PM was right to flag the potential menace.
The H5N1 virus may have dropped out of the news headlines just now, but it hasn't gone away – far from it. Last week Egypt recorded the 21st human death from avian flu in about a year. As with a quarter of all human cases, the virus had been passed between members of the same family.
The Lancet has just reported that a 52-year-old man in Nanjing, China picked up the virus from his 24-year-old son, who caught it after visiting a poultry market. The old man survived thanks to the prompt application of antiviral medicines.
Currently there are major outbreaks of the virus in the bird populations of China, India, Bangladesh and South Korea. In Pakistan and Egypt the authorities are worried about the spread of the virus in the dog and cat population.
In Britain and the US, public health studies suggest that a full-blown pandemic of bird flu or something like the respiratory disease SARS could knock out a critical mass of the working population. Some sixty per cent of the nursing and medical services could be out of action within 10 days, according to a study at the Defence Academy of the UK Staff College. This would mean the armed services would have to be called in to help.
The threat to public order - a scenario out of the Day of the Triffids or the Quatermass Experiment - is what really alarms Downing Street. An American study has suggested that in a worst case, half the population would go down with bird flu – roughly the scale of Europe's Black Death of 1348. Half of those would have to go to hospital and millions would die in the first wave.
The government has laid in stocks of 14.6m courses of Tamiflu, one of two known medicines capable of combating H5N1. However, pharmaceutical competitors have claimed that Tamiflu would only be effective for a very short time, and the WHO says the virus appeared to be resistant to Tamiflu in at least two known cases.
A glimmer of hope has been raised by research in America and the UK that suggests that there is something about humans that means the bird flu virus would have to mutate twice in order to 'unpick the lock' in the glycans, or sugar chains that line human airways and lungs.
But for Gordon Brown the problem is to warn and prepare, without causing public panic. Security experts are pretty sure a new version of the Black Death is odds on to happen. Their biggest concern now is that terrorists could use the viruses as a new weapon of mass destruction. Leaders like Brown know they have been warned. ·
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Bird flu may indeed become a modern plaque. It will be a direct result of the poverty, lack of education and infrastructure in countries that do not share access to the resources we take for granted.
We purchase our food commodities in highly regulated, sanitized supermarkets. The food we eat must pass rigor during various levels of its production, from farm to table.
In Asian, African, South American, Central American, Polynesian, Indonesian, Russian and 5 billion of the world's population, food is provided by local vendors, mostly farmers who must sell whatever they have to survive on a daily basis. These people live with their livestock and poultry.
They live in squalor according to western standards, but they live according to their economy and traditional cultural norms ensuring them survival.
It is certainly not too late to change the way human beings share this planet. We live during an incredible time in human history. Information sharing has always been key for every societal group that has progressed and raised the standards for human beings.
If we don't share the resources we have with people who must live with their poultry and livestock, we may share the virus that might sweep the world extinguishing a large swath of human beings. Mass extinction would cause collapse of most governments and probably end with nuclear war.
I am Charlie, Staten Island, New York
Oh Dear,
yet another panic.. I live in Laos where we have had bird flu for over two years. Eggs and chicken disappeared for two months, though could still be bought if one knew the right grocers. We have had one death in that time, while one person is killed on the road in Vientiane alone each day. It's hard to know what the panic is about. I can only suppose it is fear of the great white races who in their super sanitised lives have managed to compromise immunity or there is just a need to keep people frightened.
In Asia where the largest number of fatalities has been recorded, many more die from the usual suspects, malaria, diarrhoea, typhoid and liver complaints related to afflatoxins, smoking related diseases .. in twenty years there will be a rash of asbestos related illness as Indonesian factories still work with asbestos thanks to marketing from Canada Russia and Kazakhstan. As in all of Asia road and occupational illness take huge numbers of lives. In China, over 4 million die each year from occupational lung disease.
Where are the panic merchants in this instance? Where are the hordes of stern faced consultants?
It is indeed an economic and nutritional disaster for the Global South. In a region ridden with food taboos driven by poverty and religion, fowl meat and eggs (duck, turkey, quail and chicken) represents a cheap gustatory demilitarised zone.
One Indonesian doctor observed that tamiflu is about as much use as flat batteries in a vibrator (he didn't quite use those terms) as people died of pneumonia and the big problem is getting chicken farmers who are rats arse poor to take action early enough before the disease is terminal and can be treated. By seeking treatment they sentence their livelihoods to death.
Tamiflu of course puts loads of money into Donald Rumsfeld's pockets as his company provides one of the ingredients. It had shown to be largely useless in Vietnam.
Bring in the troops? Security threat? Puleez! This is just another occupational illness like Q fever, brucellosis and the great white powder beloved of Americans.. not cocaine but anthrax. It needs to be treated like other zoonoses with suitable control measures put in place. Farmers have to be sure that they will be compensated. In Lao they getting nothing.
Maybe I am getting old and have lived through too many wolf calls in this part of the world, but from where I sit it looks like another excuse for military and social control.
After all, we all gotta die of something.