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It's one of 15 varieties of avian influenza - bird flu. So far, it's the only one that's shown any ability to directly pass from one human to another. It has spread from Southeast Asia to China, Russia and now Europe. Health officials determine that close contact with live infected poultry was the source of human infection. It's the first time that evidence can be found that the virus had jumped directly from birds to humans. Indonesia, 2005. A man and his two daughters die of H5N1, although none of them worked around poultry. The WHO says it cannot rule...

A shadowy group has accused orthodox Jews of responsibility for aviary flu, which experts believe may become a pandemic threatening millions. A representative of a shadowy group calling itself the Chicken Liberation Organization has accused orthodox Jews of responsibility for the aviary flu, which experts believe may become a global pandemic threatening the lives of millions. The CLO representative, C. Little, has warned that any outbreak of the disease will be the direct result of what he called Jewish responsibility for "atmospheric lowering," a little-understood phenomenon by which the sky appears to be falling, causing migratory birds to descend precipitously...

A local animal feed manufacturer shipped a feed additive that may be effective in treating bird flu to Indonesia last week amid growing international concern over the spread of the virus. ``A veterinarian at an Indonesian zoo asked us to send our animal feed additive, which contains the bacteria leuconostoc citreum, a type of lactobacillus found in kimchi,’’ said Lee Jong-Dae, president of Celltech International. ``We shipped some 800 kilograms of the additive last week.’’ Lee added that if it is proven effective in treating chickens, ducks and other birds infected with bird flu virus there, the company will sign...

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/pipes200510170828.asp October 17, 2005, 8:28 a.m. Red Tape Choking Us Litigation, regulation, price controls, and the avian flu. By Sally Pipes "We are not prepared for a pandemic,” Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said earlier this month. We do, however, face a significant risk of being hit by one. A new strain of the avian flu, known as H5N1, has killed at least 60 people in Asia since 2003. So far, humans cannot pass it to one another — virtually everyone infected caught the virus from a diseased bird. The risk to people is nevertheless grave. The 1918...

The deadly avian influenza virus found in Turkey and Romania is bound to combine with a human variety at some point and cause a pandemic that would kill around 50,000 people in Britain, the country's chief medical officer has warned. "The significance of it isn't that there will be a pandemic of bird flu itself, the significance of it is that at some point, and we go by the lessons of history, the bird flu virus will combine with a human flu virus and then it will become easily transmissible," Liam Donaldson told BBC television on Sunday as the government...

PARIS, Oct. 13 (Xinhuanet) -- A mysterious disease hit waterfowl in west Iran, leaving thousands of dead birds, the cause is still unknown, the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said here on Thursday. "A high mortality has been observed among wild waterfowl in Poldasht (in West Azerbaijan province)" said the Paris-based organization on its website. It noted that there was no pathological agent identified nor particular lesion appeared at the autopsy and that weakness and death are only signs of this affection. The OIE said a total of 3,673 wild waterfowl had died since thephenomenon was found on Oct....

IF PRESIDENT BUSH had been awake at the switch earlier this year -- instead of, for example, obsessing about Social Security privatization schemes -- the United States would probably not find itself near the end of an international line for influenza medicine. As it is, his sudden realization that the potential of a public health disaster looms has set of an unseemly governmental scramble that mostly misses the point. Even now, the Bush response to repeated wakeup calls betrays a weird fixation on one of the less central questions that would be raised by the outbreak of a significant epidemic...

Human influenza viruses becoming resistant to class of flu drugs: CDC study Helen Branswell Canadian Press September 22, 2005 TORONTO (CP) - Human flu viruses are becoming increasingly resistant to the class of drugs known as adamantanes, one of only two existing classes of flu drugs, a new study released Thursday shows. The authors say their findings call into question the future usefulness of the adamantane or M2 inhibitor drugs - a warning echoed by a leading antiviral expert who was not involved in the work. That independent expert, Dr. Frederick Hayden suggested that in light of the findings the...

Evolution of H5N1 Avian Influenza Viruses in Asia An outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza A (H5N1) has recently spread to poultry in 9 Asian countries. H5N1 infections have caused >52 human deaths in Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia from January 2004 to April 2005. Genomic analyses of H5N1 isolates from birds and humans showed 2 distinct clades with a nonoverlapping geographic distribution. All the viral genes were of avian influenza origin, which indicates absence of reassortment with human influenza viruses. All human H5N1 isolates tested belonged to a single clade and were resistant to the adamantane drugs but sensitive to...

A recently evolved avian flu virus could mutate and become transmissible between humans, touching off a massive global pandemic, agreed public health officials from more than 20 countries in the Western Pacific region who gathered yesterday. With one small genetic adjustment in Influenza A, or H5N1, millions of people could die, warned World Health Organization Regional Director for the Western Pacific Shigeru Omi. Omi, speaking at the regional WHO meeting in Noumea, New Caledonia, in the South Pacific, called for health ministers and representatives to launch an all-out war on the deadly strain, which has killed at least 57 people....

August 16, 2005 - 17:24 Flu pandemic could trigger second Great Depression, brokerage warns clients HELEN BRANSWELL TORONTO (CP) - A major Canadian brokerage firm has added its voice to those warning of the potential global impact of an influenza pandemic, suggesting it could trigger a crisis similar to that of the Great Depression. Real estate values would be slashed, bankruptcies would soar and the insurance industry would be decimated, a newly released investor guide on avian influenza warns clients of BMO Nesbitt Burns. "It's quite analogous to the Great Depression in many ways, although obviously caused by very different...

China treats 3m farmyard birds in avian flu fear By Richard Spencer in Beijing (Filed: 24/05/2005) The Chinese government moved into overdrive yesterday in belated reaction to an outbreak of bird flu in migrating geese, sending three million doses of vaccine to the vast north-west region. Last week, 178 geese that died on Lake Qinghai, a breeding ground on the Tibetan plateau, were confirmed as having died from the bird flu virus, H5N1. A health worker disinfects a motorbike in the town of Qinghai No other cases have been reported in China this year, and the distance of the lake...

If you or any of your loved ones contracted H5N1 Avian Flu, would you trust a vaccine from self-avowed depopulationist Maurice Strong, or his protégé Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin? Through his blind trust Canada Steamship Lines’ subsidiary, Lansdowne Technologies Inc., Prime Minister Paul Martin is now in the vaccine development business. In fact, he’s been there since June 2003 when he was Canada’s Minister of Finance under Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Health authorities are now using the word "inevitable" for what they say will be a coming H5N1Avian Flu pandemic. Senior officials at the Public Health Agency of Canada...

Toronto — The military's intelligence arm has warned the federal government that avian influenza could be used as a weapon of bioterrorism, a heavily censored report suggests. It also reveals that military planners believe a naturally occurring flu pandemic may be imminent. The report, entitled Recent Human Outbreaks of Avian Influenza and Potential Biological Warfare Implications, was obtained under the Access to Information Act by The Canadian Press. It was prepared by the J2 Directorate of Strategic Intelligence, a secretive branch of National Defence charged with producing intelligence for the government. The report outlines in broad terms the methods that...

MAG: Avian Flu, On the Verge of an Epidemic Sun Feb 20 2005 11:30:41 ET The vicious avian flu that has killed dozens of people in Vietnam, Thailand, and elsewhere in the region "has caused the deaths of hundreds of millions of animals in nearly a dozen Asian countries" in the past two years and could kill millions of people if it becomes capable of spreading efficiently among humans, Michael Specter reports in "Nature's Bioterrorist" (p.50), in the February 28, 2005, issue of The New Yorker. "No such virus has ever spread so quickly over such a wide geographical area,"...

The often-melodramatic World Health Organization (WHO) is ringing alarms that bird flu will trigger an international pandemic that could kill up to seven million people. One month before Christmas, WHO issued a press release saying that the influenza pandemic could occur anywhere from next week to the coming years. With a human vaccine for the bird flu virus not expected until March 2005 at the earliest, urgency is being placed on containment. According to WHO Pooh-Bahs, two to seven million people will die. "The number of people affected will go beyond billions because between 25 percent and 30 percent will...

Avian flu 'discovered in pigs' Thousands of birds have already been infected with avian fluScientists in China say they have discovered a highly virulent strain of bird flu virus in pigs. An official at the China National Avian Flu Reference Laboratory said the H5N1 virus strain had been found in pigs at several farms in the country. More than 20 people died and almost 200 million birds were culled during a flu epidemic in Asia earlier this year. The spread to pigs has yet to be confirmed, but there could be serious implications for human health if it is. The...

Papers have been flapping with new headlines about the latest in a long line of alleged dinosaur ancestors of birds. This one is claimed to be a sensational dinosaur with feathers on its hind legs, thus four ‘wings’.1 This was named Microraptor gui—the name is derived from words meaning ‘little plunderer of Gu’ after the paleontologist Gu Zhiwei. Like so many of the alleged feathered dinosaurs, it comes from Liaoning province of northeastern China. It was about 3 feet (1 meter) long from its head to the tip of its long tail, but its body was only about the size...