AR-News: (AU) Across the species divide

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

By Donna Maegraith
January 26, 2004 
THE bird flu epidemic sending a wave of fear through an Asian region still 
reeling from last year's SARS outbreak is the latest in a series of deadly 
diseases to challenge medical wisdom.

SARS, avian flu, AIDS and ebola – increasingly we are being afflicted by a 
rollcall of nasty diseases no one had even heard of a couple of decades ago. 
And these bugs have something in common: all have jumped the species divide 
from animals to humans, raising the spectre of a dangerous, more virulent world 
where viruses emerge to launch mass attacks against us. 
The mounting death toll from the latest outbreak of bird flu in Vietnam has 
sparked talk of a flu pandemic similar to the 1918 Spanish flu that killed up 
to 50 million people worldwide. The World Health Organisation announced on 
Saturday that the flu had killed its sixth victim, a 13-year-old boy from Ho Chi 
Minh City. 
British medical journal The Lancet says in its latest issue that bird flu has 
the potential to become the world's next great pandemic. 
"The possibility of a human pandemic with a highly pathogenic avian influenza 
virus must be taken very seriously indeed," the journal says. 



full story:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,8494082%255E2873
7,00.html



"The world is a dangerous place,
not because of those who do evil,
but because of those who look on and do nothing.",
Albert Einstein

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