22
Nov
2005
My mother stopped feeding the birds in her backyard. She was afraid of contracting the bird flu. I told her that was nonsense, but we live in a culture of fear right now. The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention has fielded concerned calls both about Thanksgiving turkeys and feeding birds.
The media has been fueling the fire. A recent article in The Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/349zwhbe.asp) cited fear-mongering media reports, such as a Reuters headline that proclaimed: "Flu Pandemic Could Kill 150 Million, U.N. Warns."
And although there is much even-handed, thoughtful reporting on the bird flu out there, it often gets overshadowed by the shrill warnings.
The critical fact is this: At this point in time, there is no readily transmissible bird-flu pandemic virus - that is, an avian-flu virus that has the potential to cause widespread death in humans over a large geographic area.
Comparisons are being made to the 1918 flu outbreak, also called the Spanish Flu. That pandemic killed nearly 50 million people worldwide due to a genetic shift in the H1N1 type of flu virus, which randomly changed the genome and exposed humanity to a new strain for the first time.
But at this point, only a few dozen people have died from the avian flu. Hundreds of millions of chickens and other poultry have been slaughtered as a defensive measure, but the virus has not mutated in a way that would make it highly contagious among humans.
As the Associated Press noted in a report last week: "Past flu pandemics ... don't teach much about whether today's bird flu will become a human mega-killer or just make some scientists and officials look like Chicken Little."
Avian Flu Facts
The so-called bird flu is technically "avian influenza A (H5N1)," according to the federal Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.
Health authorities the world over are clear on one thing: Americans have nothing to fear this holiday season from eating turkey or feeding birds in the backyard. As the Centers for Disease Control writes (http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/gen-info/facts.htm):"The current risk to Americans from the H5N1 bird flu outbreak in Asia is low. The strain of H5N1 virus found in Asia and Europe has not been found in the United States. There have been no human cases of H5N1 flu in the United States."
The World Health Organization (WHO) classifies the worldwide avian-flu situation on a scale from 1 to 6, with 1 representing "low risk of human cases" and 6 representing "efficient and sustained human-to-human transmission." The current situation (http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/phase/en/index.html) rates a 3: "no or very limited human-to-human transmission."
On its Frequently Asked Questions page (http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/avian_faqs/en/index.html), the WHO describes the disease: "Avian influenza, or 'bird flu,' is a contagious disease of animals caused by viruses that normally infect only birds and, less commonly, pigs. Avian influenza viruses are highly species-specific, but have, on rare occasions, crossed the species barrier to infect humans."
As of November 17, the WHO identified 130 human cases of avian flu, leading to 67 deaths. (Since December 16, 2004, 86 cases have been reported, leading to 35 deaths.) All those cases were in Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and China. (For up-to-date numbers, visit (http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/country/en/).
Once in the body, a flu virus contains proteins called neuraminidase that allow it to penetrate a cell wall into a host cell. Once inside, the virus replicates itself and searches out new host cells with the new viruses after the host cell is destroyed.
But let's be clear that the bird flu is not the same as the typical influenza found in humans and transmitted from person to person. The viruses are different because the strains are different, and mutations are constantly occurring.
The common flu has a mortality rate of up to 2 percent. The bird flu's human mortality rate is up to 50 percent. So far, the bird flu has only been transmitted to humans through direct contact with infected birds.
The symptoms of the common flu include fever, cough, running nose, and muscle pain. Bird-flu symptoms are more severe: persistent fever, cough, sore throat, muscle aches, shortness of breath, and acute respiratory distress. Patients with avian flu can develop viral pneumonia, multiple organ failure (especially in the lungs and kidneys), and other severe and life-threatening complications in a matter of days.
Science has sophisticated means with which to fight different flu viruses, but it's important to stress that vaccines represent attempts to anticipate future mutations. Until the mutation actually occurs, it's impossible to know what it might be, how best to fight it, or its effects in humans.
Populations that exist in close proximity to each other create the opportunity for disease to occur. It's nature's way of exploiting new niches in venerable immune systems, especially in monocultures and factory farms. We modify plant, animal, and our own immune systems with herbicides, pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, and health-care drugs to buy us some time until nature finds a way to evolve around our temporary solutions. The time lag gives us a false sense of security.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, the "flu shot" that most people are familiar with contains three influenza viruses: one A (H3N2) virus, one A (H1N1) virus, and one B virus. The viruses in the vaccine change each year based on international surveillance and scientists' estimations about which types and strains of viruses will circulate in a given year. About two weeks after vaccination, antibodies that provide protection against influenza-virus infection develop in the body.
Those flu vaccines, however, don't work in fighting the avian flu. Prescription antivirals oseltamivir (known under the name brand Tamiflu) and the a lesser extent zanamivir (Relenza) are the only medications that are effective against avian flu. The drugs can prevent infection up to 80 percent and can treat patients who have had symptoms for two days or less. However, flu viruses can become resistant to these drugs, so these medications might not always work.
The drug company Gilead claims on its Web site: "Tamiflu (oseltamivir phosphate) is a neuraminidase inhibitor for the treatment and prevention of all common strains of influenza (types A and B). Discovered by Gilead and brought to market by F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Tamiflu is the first and only approved neuraminidase inhibitor available in convenient pill and liquid suspension form." Tamiflu attaches inhibitors to the virus within the cell and prevents the virus from breaking though the host-cell wall, which prevents the spread of infection to other cells, and the virus dies within the host cell.
But health questions have been raised about Tamiflu. A dozen Japanese children who took the drug died, leading health organizations in the U.S. and Europe to re-evaluate the drug.
According to UPI, "The 12 deaths in the past 13 months included one suicide, four cases of sudden death, and four heart attacks. Other deaths involved asphyxiation, pneumonia, and acute pancreatitis." But last week's report also noted: "An FDA advisory panel Friday said that Tamiflu is safe and apparently unrelated to the deaths ... ."
Conflicts of Interest and the Culture of Fear
Outside of safety concerns, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of Tamiflu - and officials who goose fear in the population with doomsday rhetoric.
For one thing, Tamiflu's developer, Gilead, has strong ties to the Bush administration. A bird-flu panic would further enrich Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld served as Gilead's Research chair from 1997 until he joined the Bush administration in 2001, and he still holds a Gilead stake valued at between $5 million and $25 million, according to federal financial disclosures filed by Rumsfeld.
The forms don't reveal the exact number of shares Rumsfeld owns, but in the past six months fears of a pandemic and the rush for Tamiflu have sent Gilead's stock from $35 to $55. Depending on the math, that's made the Pentagon chief several million dollars richer.
In another preemptive move in July, the Pentagon ordered $58 million worth of the treatment for U.S. troops around the world, and Congress is considering a $7.1-billion bird-flu package proposed by President Bush. Sales in 2005 for Tamiflu are expected to be about $1 billion, compared with $258 million in 2004.
Although Rumsfeld recused himself from any decisions involving Gilead when he left the company and became Secretary of Defense in early 2001, it's clear that council decisions are being made that greatly increase his net worth. In response to calls of conflict of interest, according to a Pentagon official, Rumsfeld considered selling his entire Gilead stake and sought the advice of the Department of Justice, the Securities & Exchange Commission, and the Office of Government Ethics. However, he ultimately made the decision to hold his shares as to avoid further investigations in the event of a stock sale.
This all seems to be part of a pattern in which we transition from one mass fear to another, a pattern that also tends to further enrich the wealthy.
Haven't we seen this reactionary response before? It seems familiar when a Bush administration official or campaign contributor is a shareholder who profits from a solution to a fear spread by doomsday scenarios that fail to materialize.
The flames are fanned by the corporate mainstream media outlets that use exaggerated assumptions and scripted verbiage with the suggested solution to whip the public into hoarding duct tape, gas masks, bomb-shelter kits, gasoline, and now Tamiflu.
Shareholders are essentially both lobbyists and decision-makers, using news conferences and public policy as marketing tactics to drive demand. To argue against the fears using any kind of investigative methodology brands a person as unpatriotic, undemocratic, and reckless by those who wish to keep the public in a constant state of defensive consumption.
There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but the administration used the public fear to rush to war. The definition of the weapons was deliberately vague, which exacerbated the fear of destruction. Ironically, the Bush administration's policy shift toward preemption as a response to the fear of new terrorism has created even more fear, as war has stoked anti-American sentiment.
Halliburton, a company that Vice President Dick Cheney once led, is making millions on the fear. The vice president retains stock options and a deferred-compensation package from Halliburton. In the past six months, Halliburton's stock has risen from $40 to well over $60 a share.
There was no petroleum shortage after hurricane Katrina, although fear of not being able to escape the hurricane caused motorists to hoard gasoline in long lines creating a demand that drove prices higher across the nation. Oil-refinery electricity was restored prior to electricity for hospitals and emergency centers, on the order of the vice president's office. Oil companies reaped record profits last quarter and are tightly aligned with the Bush administration.
All this should make citizens skeptical of any claim of an impending bird-flu pandemic. Leaders of the administration could personally profit by using fear to create a perceived scarcity, thus forcing drug and stock prices higher. Keep in mind that the federal government has a poor record of delivering adequate amounts of influenza shots each year.
The bird-blu scare could also be used to curtail civil liberties.
In June, 2004. Project BioShield was signed into law by President Bush. The Project bypasses states' rights by giving the secretaries of the Department of Defense and Department of Health & Human Services exclusive authority to declare a national emergency, whether the threat is real or only potentially real. Under Project BioShield, Donald Rumsfeld and Michael Leavitt could begin vaccinating or medicating the entire U.S. population with experimental (unlicensed and untested) drugs.
On April 1, 2005, President Bush added pandemic influenza to the list of diseases for which quarantine is authorized under Executive Order 13295.
Over the past several years, Bush and other administration officials have repeatedly urged Congress to repeal or amend the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 statute that bars the use of the military in domestic policing, except in the case of suppressing an insurrection. Overturning Posse Comitatus would allow troops to break into houses and apartments and sweep the streets for flu victims and forcibly contain them in Guantánamo-style camps. Cities, states or whole regions could be sealed off, further curtailing civil liberties in the name of national security.
Buying into the fear only advances this agenda.
As we sit down to Thanksgiving dinner this year, give thanks that we live in a democracy and have the ability to question authority rather than let fear drive our choices. Carve that local, free-range bird with confidence and enjoy the tryptophanic haze. Turn off the television showing a bad, black-and-white B movie called The Birds III: Revenge of the Rich, in which panicked families drive their SUVs in chemical suits down winding, crowded highways with empty gas stations and real-time, color-coded homeland-security billboards flashing "Danger Ahead." They're fleeing the mad migratory birds that smash through windows and carry weapons of mass destruction from Al Qaeda and a hypothetical, mutated Asian and Afghanistan virus that has only one cure: premium Tamiflu Ultra Maximum Strength, limited supplies only.
Let's remember that the threat of a flu epidemic is real but not more so now than at any other time in human history, as we have co-evolved with many bird-flu virus variants, and so have the birds. If you are more than 50 years old, you've already lived through two pandemics of flu and probably weren't even aware of it.
I am reminded of the first stanza in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven": "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, / Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, / While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, / As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. / ''Tis some visitor,' I muttered, 'tapping at my chamber door / Only this, and nothing more.'"
The media has been fueling the fire. A recent article in The Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/349zwhbe.asp) cited fear-mongering media reports, such as a Reuters headline that proclaimed: "Flu Pandemic Could Kill 150 Million, U.N. Warns."
And although there is much even-handed, thoughtful reporting on the bird flu out there, it often gets overshadowed by the shrill warnings.
The critical fact is this: At this point in time, there is no readily transmissible bird-flu pandemic virus - that is, an avian-flu virus that has the potential to cause widespread death in humans over a large geographic area.
Comparisons are being made to the 1918 flu outbreak, also called the Spanish Flu. That pandemic killed nearly 50 million people worldwide due to a genetic shift in the H1N1 type of flu virus, which randomly changed the genome and exposed humanity to a new strain for the first time.
But at this point, only a few dozen people have died from the avian flu. Hundreds of millions of chickens and other poultry have been slaughtered as a defensive measure, but the virus has not mutated in a way that would make it highly contagious among humans.
As the Associated Press noted in a report last week: "Past flu pandemics ... don't teach much about whether today's bird flu will become a human mega-killer or just make some scientists and officials look like Chicken Little."
Avian Flu Facts
The so-called bird flu is technically "avian influenza A (H5N1)," according to the federal Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.
Health authorities the world over are clear on one thing: Americans have nothing to fear this holiday season from eating turkey or feeding birds in the backyard. As the Centers for Disease Control writes (http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avian/gen-info/facts.htm):"The current risk to Americans from the H5N1 bird flu outbreak in Asia is low. The strain of H5N1 virus found in Asia and Europe has not been found in the United States. There have been no human cases of H5N1 flu in the United States."
The World Health Organization (WHO) classifies the worldwide avian-flu situation on a scale from 1 to 6, with 1 representing "low risk of human cases" and 6 representing "efficient and sustained human-to-human transmission." The current situation (http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/phase/en/index.html) rates a 3: "no or very limited human-to-human transmission."
On its Frequently Asked Questions page (http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/avian_faqs/en/index.html), the WHO describes the disease: "Avian influenza, or 'bird flu,' is a contagious disease of animals caused by viruses that normally infect only birds and, less commonly, pigs. Avian influenza viruses are highly species-specific, but have, on rare occasions, crossed the species barrier to infect humans."
As of November 17, the WHO identified 130 human cases of avian flu, leading to 67 deaths. (Since December 16, 2004, 86 cases have been reported, leading to 35 deaths.) All those cases were in Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and China. (For up-to-date numbers, visit (http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/country/en/).
Once in the body, a flu virus contains proteins called neuraminidase that allow it to penetrate a cell wall into a host cell. Once inside, the virus replicates itself and searches out new host cells with the new viruses after the host cell is destroyed.
But let's be clear that the bird flu is not the same as the typical influenza found in humans and transmitted from person to person. The viruses are different because the strains are different, and mutations are constantly occurring.
The common flu has a mortality rate of up to 2 percent. The bird flu's human mortality rate is up to 50 percent. So far, the bird flu has only been transmitted to humans through direct contact with infected birds.
The symptoms of the common flu include fever, cough, running nose, and muscle pain. Bird-flu symptoms are more severe: persistent fever, cough, sore throat, muscle aches, shortness of breath, and acute respiratory distress. Patients with avian flu can develop viral pneumonia, multiple organ failure (especially in the lungs and kidneys), and other severe and life-threatening complications in a matter of days.
Science has sophisticated means with which to fight different flu viruses, but it's important to stress that vaccines represent attempts to anticipate future mutations. Until the mutation actually occurs, it's impossible to know what it might be, how best to fight it, or its effects in humans.
Populations that exist in close proximity to each other create the opportunity for disease to occur. It's nature's way of exploiting new niches in venerable immune systems, especially in monocultures and factory farms. We modify plant, animal, and our own immune systems with herbicides, pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, and health-care drugs to buy us some time until nature finds a way to evolve around our temporary solutions. The time lag gives us a false sense of security.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, the "flu shot" that most people are familiar with contains three influenza viruses: one A (H3N2) virus, one A (H1N1) virus, and one B virus. The viruses in the vaccine change each year based on international surveillance and scientists' estimations about which types and strains of viruses will circulate in a given year. About two weeks after vaccination, antibodies that provide protection against influenza-virus infection develop in the body.
Those flu vaccines, however, don't work in fighting the avian flu. Prescription antivirals oseltamivir (known under the name brand Tamiflu) and the a lesser extent zanamivir (Relenza) are the only medications that are effective against avian flu. The drugs can prevent infection up to 80 percent and can treat patients who have had symptoms for two days or less. However, flu viruses can become resistant to these drugs, so these medications might not always work.
The drug company Gilead claims on its Web site: "Tamiflu (oseltamivir phosphate) is a neuraminidase inhibitor for the treatment and prevention of all common strains of influenza (types A and B). Discovered by Gilead and brought to market by F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Tamiflu is the first and only approved neuraminidase inhibitor available in convenient pill and liquid suspension form." Tamiflu attaches inhibitors to the virus within the cell and prevents the virus from breaking though the host-cell wall, which prevents the spread of infection to other cells, and the virus dies within the host cell.
But health questions have been raised about Tamiflu. A dozen Japanese children who took the drug died, leading health organizations in the U.S. and Europe to re-evaluate the drug.
According to UPI, "The 12 deaths in the past 13 months included one suicide, four cases of sudden death, and four heart attacks. Other deaths involved asphyxiation, pneumonia, and acute pancreatitis." But last week's report also noted: "An FDA advisory panel Friday said that Tamiflu is safe and apparently unrelated to the deaths ... ."
Conflicts of Interest and the Culture of Fear
Outside of safety concerns, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of Tamiflu - and officials who goose fear in the population with doomsday rhetoric.
For one thing, Tamiflu's developer, Gilead, has strong ties to the Bush administration. A bird-flu panic would further enrich Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld served as Gilead's Research chair from 1997 until he joined the Bush administration in 2001, and he still holds a Gilead stake valued at between $5 million and $25 million, according to federal financial disclosures filed by Rumsfeld.
The forms don't reveal the exact number of shares Rumsfeld owns, but in the past six months fears of a pandemic and the rush for Tamiflu have sent Gilead's stock from $35 to $55. Depending on the math, that's made the Pentagon chief several million dollars richer.
In another preemptive move in July, the Pentagon ordered $58 million worth of the treatment for U.S. troops around the world, and Congress is considering a $7.1-billion bird-flu package proposed by President Bush. Sales in 2005 for Tamiflu are expected to be about $1 billion, compared with $258 million in 2004.
Although Rumsfeld recused himself from any decisions involving Gilead when he left the company and became Secretary of Defense in early 2001, it's clear that council decisions are being made that greatly increase his net worth. In response to calls of conflict of interest, according to a Pentagon official, Rumsfeld considered selling his entire Gilead stake and sought the advice of the Department of Justice, the Securities & Exchange Commission, and the Office of Government Ethics. However, he ultimately made the decision to hold his shares as to avoid further investigations in the event of a stock sale.
This all seems to be part of a pattern in which we transition from one mass fear to another, a pattern that also tends to further enrich the wealthy.
Haven't we seen this reactionary response before? It seems familiar when a Bush administration official or campaign contributor is a shareholder who profits from a solution to a fear spread by doomsday scenarios that fail to materialize.
The flames are fanned by the corporate mainstream media outlets that use exaggerated assumptions and scripted verbiage with the suggested solution to whip the public into hoarding duct tape, gas masks, bomb-shelter kits, gasoline, and now Tamiflu.
Shareholders are essentially both lobbyists and decision-makers, using news conferences and public policy as marketing tactics to drive demand. To argue against the fears using any kind of investigative methodology brands a person as unpatriotic, undemocratic, and reckless by those who wish to keep the public in a constant state of defensive consumption.
There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but the administration used the public fear to rush to war. The definition of the weapons was deliberately vague, which exacerbated the fear of destruction. Ironically, the Bush administration's policy shift toward preemption as a response to the fear of new terrorism has created even more fear, as war has stoked anti-American sentiment.
Halliburton, a company that Vice President Dick Cheney once led, is making millions on the fear. The vice president retains stock options and a deferred-compensation package from Halliburton. In the past six months, Halliburton's stock has risen from $40 to well over $60 a share.
There was no petroleum shortage after hurricane Katrina, although fear of not being able to escape the hurricane caused motorists to hoard gasoline in long lines creating a demand that drove prices higher across the nation. Oil-refinery electricity was restored prior to electricity for hospitals and emergency centers, on the order of the vice president's office. Oil companies reaped record profits last quarter and are tightly aligned with the Bush administration.
All this should make citizens skeptical of any claim of an impending bird-flu pandemic. Leaders of the administration could personally profit by using fear to create a perceived scarcity, thus forcing drug and stock prices higher. Keep in mind that the federal government has a poor record of delivering adequate amounts of influenza shots each year.
The bird-blu scare could also be used to curtail civil liberties.
In June, 2004. Project BioShield was signed into law by President Bush. The Project bypasses states' rights by giving the secretaries of the Department of Defense and Department of Health & Human Services exclusive authority to declare a national emergency, whether the threat is real or only potentially real. Under Project BioShield, Donald Rumsfeld and Michael Leavitt could begin vaccinating or medicating the entire U.S. population with experimental (unlicensed and untested) drugs.
On April 1, 2005, President Bush added pandemic influenza to the list of diseases for which quarantine is authorized under Executive Order 13295.
Over the past several years, Bush and other administration officials have repeatedly urged Congress to repeal or amend the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 statute that bars the use of the military in domestic policing, except in the case of suppressing an insurrection. Overturning Posse Comitatus would allow troops to break into houses and apartments and sweep the streets for flu victims and forcibly contain them in Guantánamo-style camps. Cities, states or whole regions could be sealed off, further curtailing civil liberties in the name of national security.
Buying into the fear only advances this agenda.
As we sit down to Thanksgiving dinner this year, give thanks that we live in a democracy and have the ability to question authority rather than let fear drive our choices. Carve that local, free-range bird with confidence and enjoy the tryptophanic haze. Turn off the television showing a bad, black-and-white B movie called The Birds III: Revenge of the Rich, in which panicked families drive their SUVs in chemical suits down winding, crowded highways with empty gas stations and real-time, color-coded homeland-security billboards flashing "Danger Ahead." They're fleeing the mad migratory birds that smash through windows and carry weapons of mass destruction from Al Qaeda and a hypothetical, mutated Asian and Afghanistan virus that has only one cure: premium Tamiflu Ultra Maximum Strength, limited supplies only.
Let's remember that the threat of a flu epidemic is real but not more so now than at any other time in human history, as we have co-evolved with many bird-flu virus variants, and so have the birds. If you are more than 50 years old, you've already lived through two pandemics of flu and probably weren't even aware of it.
I am reminded of the first stanza in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven": "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, / Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, / While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, / As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. / ''Tis some visitor,' I muttered, 'tapping at my chamber door / Only this, and nothing more.'"
