Looks Like Kfc Is Off Menu

[eric1000]

Chicken flu 'poses frightening threat to humanity'

A leading medical journal has warned chicken flu poses a massively frightening potential threat to humanity.

At least five people in Vietnam are now known to have died in the latest outbreak and the Lancet medical journal said in an editorial that standard vaccines would be useless against the virus if it started spreading through human communities.

At present the avian flu strain, known as H5N1, is not thought capable of passing from person to person. But experts fear it might acquire the ability if its DNA mingles with that of a human flu virus. Such "reassortment" is a well-known feature of viruses.

The Lancet says if this were to happen, the scene could be set for a major world-scale disaster like the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, which killed up to 40 million people.

The journal said: "The fear is that a strain such as H5N1 might reassort with a human influenza virus to become contagious among people. In view of the high mortality of human influenza associated with this strain, the prospect of a worldwide pandemic is massively frightening."

Wild birds were the main source of avian influenza, but live poultry markets in Asia provided the virus with a breeding ground. In 1997, 18 people in Hong Kong were admitted to hospital with H5N1 infection, and six died.

This outbreak was the first documented example of direct transmission of the strain to humans. It resulted in 1.4 million chickens and other poultry birds - the entire stock in Hong Kong - being destroyed. Another outbreak in the former colony in 1999 saw 1.25 million birds culled.

Last year two Hong Kong residents developed H5N1 influenza after returning from China, and one died. In the same year, a related strain, H7N7, broke out in the Netherlands poultry industry and killed a vet.

The latest outbreak has sent World Health Organisation and United Nations experts racing to Vietnam. By January 20, a fifth person in the country had died from H5N1 influenza, according to the Who. Bird stocks in Japan and South Korea had also been infected.

Traditional vaccines cannot be made to combat either H5 or H7 avian influenza. Antiviral drugs, meanwhile, are expensive and not effective enough. The Lancet added that influenza was more contagious than Sars and was unlikely to be controlled by quarantine measures effective against Sars.

Story filed: 07:25 Friday 23rd January 2004

[sbk]

My information is that this bird flu is transmitted by inhaling the dried faeces of chickens, so almost everyone who has come down with it has been in direct contact with a live bird. Most of them live on or near chicken farms. Another major panic attack. First SARS now this. Lets get real people, crossing the street is riskier!

[dr_Pat_Pong]

My information is that this bird flu is transmitted by inhaling the dried faeces of chickens, so almost everyone who has come down with it has been in direct contact with a live bird. Most of them live on or near chicken farms. Another major panic attack. First SARS now this. Lets get real people, crossing the street is riskier!

Let sanity prevail sbk. Well said. Farangs are still visiting the ladies of the night in the streets of delight. That just might be more dangerous to life.

[Axel]

Let sanity prevail sbk. Well said. Farangs are still visiting the ladies of the night in the streets of delight. That just might be more dangerous to life.

Have I been ever so slow? Finally I do understand the meaning of 'chicken-farm'.

So whenever you do go to a house of ill repute, make sure the chicken is not flying like a butterfly or perhaps a helicopter, do not mix your DNA and for sure watch out for any influenza.

[sbk]

I said, chicken farm not ranch! There is quite a famous 'ranch' in Nevada but that is not named after any bird but after a horse.

Don't think that was the kind of influenze dr pp was referring to!

[Axel]

I don't want to steal this threat, serious enough as it is.

But than, SBK, I read somewhere that the Mustang is closed.

Quite different with the Chicken Ranch, you just cross the Nye County Line and soon thereafter, turn left on Gamebird Road.

Don't tell me, whoever named the area had no humour.

Aahhh, no, I've never been there.

[Spee]

Eric wrote:

"Chicken flu 'poses frightening threat to humanity'

A leading medical journal has warned chicken flu poses a massively frightening potential threat to humanity."

It has also been widely noted that thoroughly cooking poultry completely kills off anything that could hurt a human.

While one needs to be careful, for the mass consumer it seems more like the story of Chicken Little and The Sky Is Falling.