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Is bird flu a dead duck?



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Published Date: 08 April 2008
By LYNDSAY MOSS
'IT'S NOT a case of if, but when," we were told a few years ago when experts discussed the threat of a flu pandemic killing hundreds of thousands of people, young and old. The strain of bird flu known as H5N1 was seen as the most likely starting point, mutating into a form easily spread between humans.
But now you could be forgiven for thinking the threat had disappeared, apart from the odd case of a human catching bird flu in some country far away from our own, as well as the odd dead swan testing positive in the UK. However, we ignore the threat ...



The full article contains 993 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
Page 1 of 1

 
1

Charles Linskaill,

Edinburgh 08/04/2008 00:06:31

"The possibility of a pandemic remains"

I have been telling you all this for ages!

But keep on laughing, I will have the last laugh!
2

Tweedmouth,

Coldstream 08/04/2008 10:06:25
I strongly recommend Christopher Booker's recent book " Scared to Death: From BSE to Global Warming".

From salmonella in eggs to BSE, from the Millennium Bug to bird 'flu, from DDT to passive smoking, from asbestos to global warming, 'scares' have become one of the most conspicuous and damaging features of our modern world. This book for the first time tells the inside story of each of the major scares of the past two decades, showing how they have followed a remarkably consistent pattern.It analyses the crucial role played in each case by scientists who have misread or manipulated the evidence; by the media and lobbyists who eagerly promote the scare without regard to the facts; and finally by the politicians and officials who come up with an absurdly disproportionate response, leaving us all to pay a colossal price, which may run into billions or even hundreds of billions of pounds. This book culminates in a chillingly detailed account of the story behind what it shows has become the greatest scare of them all: the belief that the world faces disaster through man-made global warming. In an epilogue the authors compare our credulity in falling for scares to mass-hysterias of previous ages such as the post-mediaeval 'witch craze', describing our time as a 'new age of superstition'.

 

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