Posted on 12/01/2005 6:00:25 PM PST by Lessismore
A senior Japanese virologist and adviser to the World Health Organization (WHO) roiled the influenza field last week when he suggested--during what he believed was a private gathering in Germany--that China had concealed hundreds of human bird flu deaths. That's how several people, including two reporters, interpreted a talk by Masato Tashiro, director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo. But Tashiro denies that he made any such allegation, saying he only meant to say that surveillance in China is poor.
According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) newspaper, Tashiro stunned an audience on 18 November that had gathered to mark the retirement of University of Marburg virologist Hans- Dieter Klenk. FAZ reported that Tashiro showed a table documenting several dozen outbreaks of the bird flu strain H5N1 in China, whose toll included at least 300 human deaths, seven cases of probable human-to-human transmission, and more than 3000 people in quarantine. "We are systematically being deceived," the story quoted Tashiro as saying. Official records list only three confirmed human cases of H5N1 in China, two of them fatal. Given the number of avian outbreaks, many virologists wonder why China hasn't seen more human cases, says virologist Peter Palese of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.
Tashiro's allegations appeared on ProMED, an e-mail list, on 23 November. China's foreign ministry quickly denounced them as "baseless."
In an interview with Science, Tashiro called the FAZ story "misleading." He did show a table with information given to him by "a friend" in China, he says, but just to illustrate the type of "underground rumors" currently circulating. "The friend is reliable, but the information itself, I don't know," says Tashiro, who says his only point was that China may be missing H5N1 cases. "I don't think they are concealing any important facts."
But several people at the meeting took away a different message. The German radio network WDR carried a story similar to FAZ's, reporting "more than 200" deaths. "We were all flabbergasted; we didn't want to believe it," says virologist and biochemist Michael Schmidt of the Freie Universität in Berlin, who was in the audience. "Tashiro is deeply convinced there have been at least 200 deaths; … he's very concerned. Maybe he thought this was just a small circle of friends where he could say a little bit more." Klenk also says the FAZ story was a "correct" reflection of the talk.
China's relations with WHO have been rocky since the country was caught hiding the true extent of the SARS epidemic in 2003. But China is cooperating well on bird flu, says Klaus Stöhr of WHO's influenza program. And although many people think the Chinese government may be missing human H5N1 cases, WHO has no reason to believe that it is concealing them, Stöhr says.
But China is cooperating well on bird flu, says Klaus Stöhr of WHO's influenza program.And if you can't believe Klaus Stöhr of WHO, who can you believe?
> ... that China had concealed hundreds of human bird flu deaths.
Any serious scientist surprised by such a revelation is
only pretending to be surprised.
Be sure to post the report onto:
Avian Flu Surveillance Project
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1399613/posts
And if you can't believe Klaus Stöhr of WHO, who can you believe?
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