Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching

This book combines the history of the 1918 pandemic flu (its treatment, and the viral archeology done to learn from its occurrence and viral structure), with the more recent history of avian flu virus H5N1, pandemic preparedness, and pandemic prevention. It focuses on treatment of animals, particularly poultry, and, particularly, in food industry settings, theorising that viral mutation and animal-to-human transmission start there, and that early intervention can begin there also.

The author focuses his discussion of the flu on the three essential conditions: "First, a new virus must arise from an animal reservoir, such that humans have no natural immunity to it. Second, the virus must evolve to be capable of killing human beings efficiently. Third, the virus must succeed in jumping efficiently from one human to the next." He explores the underlying conditions that might make it difficult to "snuff out an emerging flu pandemic at the source if caught early enough..."

The book's premise is that animal viruses, including bird viruses, are not new, but how poultry production has been industrialised is new and potentially problematic. It poses a question based on the fact that people have kept backyard chicken flocks for centuries and that wild birds, now thought to spread the disease in widening geographic patterns, have migrated for millions of years, carrying intestinal influenza viruses. The question is: how does an intestinal bird virus come to inhabit a human lung and cause a potential pandemic? For information on that question, the author looks to the chief of virology at Hong Kong’s Queen Mary Hospital, who believes that "the cause and solution [of H5N1] lies within the poultry industry." He also looks to the poultry industry: "Modern day poultry production is so highly concentrated that this disease can spread so rapidly,” one Maryland chicken farmer admitted.

The book suggests that the United States has the potential to control bird diseases through clinical surveillance, rapid detection, and flock vaccination. Internationally, any government's tendency to deny or suppress information magnifies the potential of a pandemic. Those with unsophisticated public health infrastructure lack resources to contain avian influenza outbreaks. Stockpiling vaccine supplies is discussed, as well as other prevention and treatment strategies.

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