Bush Ignores Potential Threat of Bird Flu

>From <www.commondreams.org>

Published on Wednesday, February 4, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Bush Administration Ignores the Potential Threat of Bird Flu
by Ralph Nader

Each day the news becomes more ominous regarding the spread of a "bird flu"
or avian influenza through nine east Asian countries. Millions of chickens
have died from this disease and millions more have been slaughtered to stop
the spread to humans. For now, humans can contract this flu by direct
contact with the fowl's feces but health experts fear the virus could
mutate with a human influenza virus that would then be transmissible from
human to human and produce an epidemic spreading around the world.

Over 30,000 Americans die from influenza or flu every year. Ever wonder
why so many of the annual flu strains have Chinese names? Because ducks
get infected on Chinese farms, give the virus to pigs who then transmit it
to farm families who live in very close proximities to their animals. Then
the virus takes off across the pacific and over the past century has taken
millions of American lives.

This is not, however, the weapon of mass destruction that concerns
President George W. Bush. He has spent over $400 million taxpayer dollars
since March looking and not finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
He has his government deeply involved in this futile quest which even his
chief weapons inspector, David Kay, finds an exercise without results. The
media covers this subject almost daily.

Have you heard much about Mr. Bush turning his attention and skilled health
personnel in a major way toward China's deadliest annual export to the
U.S.? He certainly has condoned and facilitated the export of American
factories and industries to the Chinese communist regime. This exodus has
left hollowed communities and unemployment lines behind -- all in the name
of"free trade" which is really corporate managed trade with a dictatorial
government.

Meanwhile, infectious disease experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control in Atlanta fear the onset of a massive pandemic, like the one in
1919 that took over one million American lives and some twenty million
worldwide.

The level of response and resources amount the world's nations is nowhere
near the needs for prevention, early surveillance, testing, diagnosis,
treatment and the application of modern epidemiological sciences.

President Bush would do well to intensively brief himself about the dire
necessity of international health cooperation in this area. Health
treaties against infectious diseases epidemics are a front rank priority,
ahead of Mr. Bush's concentration on industry-exporting trade treaties with
authoritarian regimes.

What would these health treaties provide for? For starters, technical
expert assistance, quicker and better laboratory testing, the placement of
U.S. infectious disease specialists in China beyond the handful who are
already there. There are far more American salesmen in China representing
U.S. shaving firms than these life-saving experts.

In addition, since the U.S. imports over $150 billion worth of Chinese
goods a year (producing a massive trade imbalance), the U.S. should be able
to persuade Chinese officials to stop denying there is a problem -- as with
the SARS epidemic -- until it is late in the transmission stage. China
should establish a timely, precise, accurate, open disclosure system. It
did not in the SARS case. The results were hundreds of fatalities and tens
of billions of dollars of lost production and sales to the Chinese economy.

Most fundamentally, animal health specialists and agronomists are needed in
both countries to cooperate over ways to separate the close proximities
between these animals and their caretakers and to provideadequate equipment
(like goggles, gloves and face masks) when massive flocks of afflicted
chickens have to be destroyed.

The chain of infections from domesticated Chinese ducks to pigs to humans
can explode into a world war of mutant viruses taking millions of
casualties before vaccines can be developed and deployed. Mr. Bush must
pay serious attention to this form of biological warfare and listen to his
scientists and physicians now too far down his chain of command and
control.