Scientist Doubts Efforts To Detect Avian Flu In US

ORONO, Maine - A potential avian flu pandemic may have slipped from the headlines, but the threat is still very real. And one leading expert worries that U.S. efforts to detect the deadly avian flu strain may be subpar.

Peter Marra, a research scientist with the Smithsonian Institution and the National Zoo in Washington, told fellow ornithologists gathered at the University of Maine on Saturday that health and wildlife officials may be focusing too heavily on migratory birds when looking for the bird flu strain that has killed nearly 200 people worldwide.

Marra, a research scientist with the National Zoo’s Migratory Bird Center, said he believes officials should be paying closer attention to poultry flocks and imported pet birds as possible vectors for avian flu. To date, the H5N1 strain of avian flu has not been found in the U.S.

"Yes, I believe [migratory birds] are contributing, but I believe we have to look at these other pathways," Marra told attendees of the Association of Field Ornithologists’ annual meeting being held at UMaine.

Marra said he has spent considerable time urging federal agencies, politicians on Capitol Hill and White House officials to broaden monitoring programs for the H5N1 strain of avian flu beyond wild birds. But so far, Marra does not believe his message is getting through.

There are many strains of avian or bird flu, the vast majority of which pose little to no danger to humans. But the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus has killed nearly 200 people in a dozen countries since 2003.

Scientists also are concerned that H5N1 virus eventually could mutate into a form transmissible from person to person, creating the potential for a human flu pandemic.

Maine already is participating in a national program in which a select group of highly social birds — Canada geese, Arctic terns and common eiders, among them — are being rounded up and tested for the presence of H5N1. The tests are done without harming the birds.

Marra questioned the usefulness of tests on live birds, explaining that birds infected with H5N1 will either quickly die or develop antibodies to the virus. Instead, officials should be spending more time — and money — testing dead birds, he said.

The potential for spreading avian flu is 15 times higher among poultry flocks than among wild birds, according to data presented by Marra. While the U.S. does not now allow importation of live poultry, both Canada and Mexico still do. The U.S. also imported 45,000 exotic birds for the pet trade last year, he said.

Marra said scientists still do not understand the ecology of H5N1 as well as how the virus might spread through migratory birds. That’s because, while the migratory patterns of some birds are well known, many others are still unclear, he said.

The Smithsonian researcher also strongly criticized some countries’ attempts to control the spread of the deadly avian flu virus by killing massive numbers of wild birds.

Marra’s presentation was one of about a dozen lectures or panel discussions held during the weekend as part of the Association of Field Ornithologists meeting.

Of course, no gathering of leading authorities on all things bird-related would be complete without bird-watching expeditions. Dozens of attendees from throughout the U.S. hit such popular bird-watching spots as Machias Seal Island to see puffins, the Scarborough Marsh and the Orono Bog Boardwalk.

The event’s host was UMaine and it was co-sponsored by Maine Audubon and the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

"A lot of nationally and internationally recognized ornithologists got their degrees from UMaine," Rebecca Holberton, a UMaine professor and the organizer of the conference, said in a statement. "I offered to organize this a year ago knowing that it would not only be a good opportunity for professional and student ornithologists to see UMaine, but also a great time to see birds here as well."

I doubt detection efforts, too. Because there ain't gonna be no flu pandemic.

It's a nice growth industry for certain cabals within the NIH, the DHS, the CDC, and the DHHS itself.

Worked among 'em, saw how bogus it all is an how unprepared the world would be if it realy the flu really did materialize. I'm a scientist and a former (!) USGOV functionary and now am an occasional consultant.

Home schooling, telecommuting, masks, lots of handwashing, a 1 to 10 stock split for the makers of Purell, and Darwinian selection of segemnts of the population would be the major outcomes in the US, but the rest of the world would not fare as well, so I pray that I am correct in my considered predictions.....

How to imagine the threat from AF was indirectly described by the chief epidemiologist of Vietnam, who discovered a herd of pigs infected with the flu. Each pig had about five different strains of the disease, each strain in contention with the others to be the “best” strain.

In turn, this was like a “semi-finals”, in that the “best strain” from each pig would then compete with the “best strains” from every other pig in the herd. Eventually, every pig in the herd would have the “best strain” of them all, out of perhaps a hundred or more variations of the virus.

And that was in just a single herd. If you compare that to tens of thousands of just swine herds, and hundreds of thousands of flocks of birds, what you end up with is a vast, “natural computer”, trying to produce the “best” strain of the virus.

The H5 variant of influenza, unlike H1, H2, and H3, has not yet figured out how to reproduce primarily in the upper respiratory tract and sinuses of humans. Instead, it reproduces in the lower respiratory tract, and some of the internal organs, unlike other flus. But this is the one thing that makes it far harder to transmit person-to-person (P2P).

So that is the one calculation, the one variation, the “natural computer” needs to figure out, for it to become a plague of amazing lethality.

In many ways, H5N1 is unlike any flu we have ever encountered. There is no, zero, immunity in the human species to it. Its mortality rate is far higher than the murderous Spanish flu, and very atypically, the mortality rate has not declined significantly over time.

It infects far more animals than any other known species of influenza. Cats and dogs have radically different immune systems, but also many types of birds, many other mammals and even some fish may carry the disease, exchanged with water foul.

With a chance mutation, even if it didn’t kill people readily, it could wipe out vast numbers of domestic foul and livestock, causing huge famines. Many nations still use farm animals to harvest their crops as well.

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