Malaysia Veterinary Forum (Archive)

Dr Max · Joined: 15 Dec 2005 Posts: 8 Location: Kuala Lumpur

Dear guys,

This was forwarded to me and I find it interesting to read. Believe it or not, you judge it for yourself.

Ruffled feathers
UF professor says bird flu is not a threat in the U.S.

CATHERINE DOLINSKI
STAR-BANNER

Note: Butcher has been an extension veterinarian at the University of Florida's College of Veterinary Medicine since 1988. He was trained as a veterinarian specializing in avian diseases, and has a Ph.D. in poultry virology.As the only poultry veterinarian in the state, Dr. Gary Butcher, of the University of Florida, is skeptical of an avian flu epidemic. "There is zero threat of human infection in the U.S.," says Butcher, a doctor of veterinary medicine.

GAINESVILLE -Researchers and health agencies continue to sound the alarm about avian flu, and Dr. Gary Butcher, an expert on poultry medicine and disease at the University of Florida's College of Veterinary Medicine thinks he knows why.

"The agenda here is pretty obvious," he said. "People want grant money. This is a bonanza."

Butcher, who advises agricultural ministries and poultry companies around the world, is Florida's lone poultry veterinarian. He has also emerged as a leading naysayer on the prospects for a avian flu pandemic.

Butcher insists the likelihood that the H5N1 avian flu virus in Asia will trigger a pandemic is practically nil. But the fear-mongering will continue, he said, as long as people see a potential for financial and career gain in it.

He believes that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is overstating the threat posed by avian flu to justify its budget, and to a large extent, its existence. The World Health Organization, he said, has issued its warnings for similar reasons.

"They're under intense pressure," he said of the WHO. "They've had so many problems in the past, problems with internal corruption. . . . They're in dire need of new funding and this is their golden goose, as long as they can keep it going."

Butcher knows his words sound harsh, he said, but there is a war on.

"This is a full-on war against agriculture," Butcher said - and he is firing back.

BUTCHER'S BEEF
Historically, pandemics have tended to recur every 20 to 40 years. The last occurred in 1968. The Hong Kong Flu caused between 750,000 and 2 million deaths worldwide, about 34,000 of those deaths were in the United States.

In November, President Bush asked Congress for $7.1 billion to prepare for the next pandemic flu, pointing to the H5N1 virus that numerous health experts have identified as a potential pandemic threat.

Butcher does not doubt the world is in for another pandemic, he said. But the constant hum of warnings in this country about the avian flu irks him - especially since influenza has long infected about 30 percent of the native wild duck population when it migrates annually to Canada. As the weather turns cold, the birds migrate south through the United States.

"This occurs every year," Butcher said. "We very, very rarely have infections spread to commercial poultry."

The H5N1 virus is a much more serious strain, he said, but it poses no greater threat of human infection.

"The threat is basically zero," he said. "We're spending all of our attention on this [virus], and another one may sneak up on us."

Realistically, no one knows what is going to happen, said Dr. Sherrill Davison, director of the avian medicine and pathology laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. "We're having, in the poultry industry, differences of opinion about the risks we're seeing."

H5N1 is highly pathogenic, she said, which is unusual. Davison believes that is cause for concern and preparation, but not panic.

"We get a fair amount of calls from people very concerned, even panicked," she said. "I tell them it's not in the United States, and that we have a policy in the United States that, if we did have something similar to it, the birds would be euthanized and not enter the food chain."

Even if the virus did penetrate the food supply, she said, cooking it would kill it anyway.

CONFLICTS?
Cooking guidelines appear on the World Health Organization's list of safeguards against avian flu infection. Released Dec. 5, the recommendations include not eating raw poultry and washing one's hands after handling raw bird parts.

The guidelines are accurate, Butcher said, but have little to do with avian flu.

"There's nothing new here," he said, explaining that every recommendation is a long-standing general safety guideline for handling poultry. Linking them to the flu, he said, is inappropriately suggestive.

The WHO's Web site also warns that the H5N1 avian flu has killed half of the people it has infected. That's true, Butcher said, but given the fact that the virus has only infected roughly 130 people, that 50 percent statistic paints a misleading picture.

"The guy who wrote this really wants to make this sound like a big thing," Butcher said, reading through the WHO's "frequently asked questions" about avian flu.

"Dr. Butcher is certainly entitled to his opinion," WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng said in an e-mailed response. "We clearly do not share it."

H5N1 has fulfilled two of three scientific criteria for a pandemic virus, Cheng said. All that is left, she said, is for it to transmit easily between people.

She acknowledged that speaking openly about a possible bird flu pandemic can incite fear, but said it is the WHO's responsibility to warn about the risks.

As for the safety guidelines, she said, the WHO has been deluged by requests for practical advice on minimizing the risk of infection.

"There are many uncertainties about the situation, which the WHO has tried to explain," she said. "We do not know if H5N1 will spark the next pandemic. We know only that, scientifically, it looks to be the most likely candidate."

Butcher disagrees. The H5N1 virus kills the birds it infects, he said, which denies it the opportunity to mutate into something easily transmissible among humans. And because the U.S. poultry industry keeps its birds indoors, he said, they are highly unlikely to contract the virus from infected migratory birds.

The veterinarian reserved some of his harshest criticism for the USDA, which he believes is overstating the threat to justify its intensifying bird surveillance programs and gain funding and influence.

"They're trying to keep [avian flu] in the spotlight," he said.

"Everyone's keeping it in the spotlight," said Madelaine Fletcher, spokeswoman for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service division of the USDA.

Fletcher declined to respond to Butcher's accusations about the agency's agenda. "We've tried to keep biosecurity and sick birds in the spotlight so people know what to look for, but that's because our mission is to keep these [viruses] out of the country."

Butcher's perspective is not only that of an academic expert, but that of an industry consultant. When he is not teaching and researching in Gainesville, Butcher often travels to Panama, Russia, Ecuador, Vietnam, Thailand and other countries, advising governments and poultry companies whose survival and profits are threatened by public fears of bird flu.

In his travels, he said, he sees the evidence of serious economic harm caused by misplaced fear. "Poultry consumption is down 50 percent in Europe," he said. "It's a disaster."

From a health standpoint, however, fear of the bird flu has its benefits, said Dr. Nathan Grossman, director of the Marion County Health Department. The result has been increasing preparations at all government levels for some form of pandemic.

"I realize people have the impression we're preparing because the bird flu is coming," Grossman said. "That's a misconception. . . . It happens to be the novel virus that has sparked people to it."

But Butcher remains troubled. "I don't think people understand the effect its had on economies, industries and even the mental health of people around the world," he said. "It's prudent to be prepared, but it's not prudent to inspire this overreaction."

Dr. TanDY · Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2006 8:28 pm Post subject:

It's true that some scientists argue that the bird flu threat is "minimal".

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'Very low' risk of bird flu spreading between humans: British government scientist

Source: Agence France Presse (AFP)

Sun Apr 9, 4:30 PM ET

The likelihood of the lethal H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus mutating into a form that can be transmitted between humans is "very low", the British government's chief scientific adviser said.

David King was speaking after a dead swan discovered in eastern Scotland this week was found to have the H5N1 strain of the disease, prompting speculation that the virus could spread throughout Britain.

But although the scientist acknowledged that transmission of the disease from birds to humans could trigger a global pandemic, he said it was "totally misleading" to say it was inevitable.

"The pandemic flu that we are now talking about would be in the human population. It is not in the human population at the moment," he told ITV1 television.

"So, yes, the government is preparing for that possibility but I would say it's a very low possibility. I don't believe it's inevitable."

King noted that despite the 100 or more deaths from bird flu, mainly in Asia, widespread human-to-human transmission of the disease had not developed.

And he denied that the swan's discovery meant that bird flu was now in Britain, insisting it was "absolutely not" in poultry and that he was "fairly optimistic" about the wild bird population escaping the disease.

"The one swan does not mean it has arrived here. We need to see more evidence of spread before we can say that is has arrived in the United Kingdom," he said.

Malaysia announced Sunday it was banning imports of birds and eggs from Britain following the discovery.

The mute swan in Scotland had a "very similar" strain of the H5N1 form of bird flu to the one found in scores of birds on the German island of Ruegen in February, Scotland's chief veterinary officer Charles Milne revealed Sunday.

But he said there was no scientific proof to determine how the swan came to be infected.

The discovery has prompted thousands of calls reporting dead birds to a national helpline set up by the environment ministry.

Dr csh · Joined: 21 Jan 2006 Posts: 425

I would argue the same point (it is unlikely that avian influenza will kill millions). If you look at human history, a pandemic that kills millions of people happen every couple of hundred years. Some times it is (likely) caused by a viral pathogen and sometimes it is caused by a bacterial pathogen. We really cannot predict which will be the next big "bug". I would say mutant strains of SARS, Ebola, etc. are all just as likely as avian influenza.
However, I do think it is a good thing that there is so much grant money to study Avian Influenza and Influenza in general. Scientists have managed to find all sorts of interesting molecular features of influenza and these new findings may help us find better ways to control the disease.
So I think it is unreasonable for people to change their lives and have unreasonable fear of birds. I'm not saying for people to go to outbreak farms and be cavalier and not take proper precautions (like the Nipah fiasco). Be practical and understand different risk situations.... You are unlikely to catch AI walking on the road and a pigeon flies by but you are much more likely if you are in a barn with 100,000 sick chickens.