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Dr. Greger's Pandemic Update: November 2008

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At the International Ministerial Conference on Avian and Pandemic Influenza
last month, David Nabarro, senior flu coordinator at the United Nations,
reiterated that the threat of a pandemic triggered by an avian influenza
virus is as great as it was five years ago, when H5N1 first started its
march around the world. Updated estimates by the World Bank predict a severe
pandemic could cost trillions and kill a quarter of a billion people.

Evidence continues to build, implicating the intensification of the global
poultry sector in the emergence and spread of highly pathogenic avian flu
viruses. A paper in this week's "Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences," for example, suggests that half of the genetic diversity has been
lost in commercial poultry breeds, which could have serious potential public
health implications as I detailed in my chapter "Monoculture" [
http://birdflubook.com/a.php?id=73]. In the May/June 2008 issue of "Public
Health Reports," the official peer-reviewed scientific journal of the U.S.
Public Health Service, an international team of scientists, including
researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, suggests that the
best available data show that birds confined in industrial operations have
up to 32-times more risk of being infected with H5N1 than backyard flocks [
http://www.publichealthreports.org/userfiles/123_3/282-299.pdf].

The copyright "embargo" of my 50-page review of the subject in "Critical
Reviews in Microbiology" has expired, and so I'm able to finally post it
online at http://tinyurl.com/BirdFluReview . The paper explores the
underlying evolutionary biological theory that may explain why
industrialized poultry production poses such a threat.

And finally, thanks to the generous support of The Sheepdrove Trust, the
Pandemic Prevention presentation I've been giving around the world was
professionally recorded and made into an hour-long DVD close-captioned in
Arabic, Chinese, French, Hindi, and Spanish. A 10-minute "teaser" is
available online at http://tinyurl.com/BirdFluVideo . While supplies last, I
am happy to send anyone a complimentary copy of the DVD. If you are
interested, please email your mailing address to m...@cornell.edu .

--
Michael Greger, M.D.
Director, Public Health and Animal Agriculture
The Humane Society of the United States
2100 L St., N.W.
Washington, DC 20037
direct line: (202) 676-2361
fax: (202) 676-2372
http://www.birdflubook.org