News Analysis - In a flap over bird flu
WORKERS, NOV 2005 ISSUE
There is no evidence that bird flu has been transmitted from one human being to another, but there is evidence that the current hysteria over bird flu has been whipped up by a UN health official, David Nabarro. He asserted that a flu pandemic could kill up to 150 million people, claiming that the virus could mutate so that it could be passed between humans. "It's like a combination of global warming and HIV/Aids ten times faster than it's running at the moment," Dr Nabarro told the BBC. Avian flu, CJD, the MMR vaccination, genetically modified crops, DDT – the scares are the real pandemic, poisoning people's minds, trying to make us all feel and behave like powerless victims.
Although the H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed more than 60 people in South East Asia since 2003, not one person is known to have died after catching the virus from another human – nor even to have caught the virus at all from another person. Those who died did so after coming into close contact with birds such as chickens. There is no evidence that it can be caught from wild birds, which often carry flu viruses.
Following reports that European pharmacists were selling out of the antiviral drug Tamiflu, the WHO's pandemic alert chief Michael Ryan said, "WHO at this point does not advise for individuals to stockpile this drug for any purpose...There is no indication at this stage for anyone to be taking this drug other than the very high-risk groups in areas in which the avian disease has become a problem," including poultry farmers and medical staff. Malaysia, South Korea and Japan have all successfully eliminated the virus, and it has not re-entered their bird populations.
Meanwhile, malaria...
By contrast with avian flu, malaria causes or contributes to three million deaths and up to 500 million acute clinical cases every year. In other words, almost as many deaths per year as the AIDS death total in the last 15 years, and rather more than caused by global warming. The majority of those dying are children – at a rate of four per minute, 5,000 a day, 35,000 a week. Malaria is one of leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the developing world (along with TB, diarrhoea and HIV/Aids) but it is still not recognised in developed countries as a disaster.
In fact, malaria now kills more people than it did 30 years ago. By 1970, WHO's programme of spraying mosquitoes with the insecticide DDT had eradicated or dramatically reduced malaria in 37 countries. Since then malaria has spread rapidly, especially over the past decade, partly because the DDT scare led to bans on its use. But not one replicated study has shown DDT as harmful to humans.
India's malaria eradication programme in the 1950s and 1960s reduced infections from 75 million to 100,000 per annum and deaths from 800,000 to almost none. Over the past two decades, the trend has reversed, with four major epidemics since 1994. In 1996, 2.85 million cases were reported, and the official – and under-reported – death toll was around 3,000.
While DDT has to be used with care, until an alternative can be found, the pressure from 'green' environmentalists to ban it condemns thousands to an early death – another example of a scare story and how the views of scientists are marginalised.