- The last three influenza pandemics have all originated
in Asia ö the 1957 Asian flu, the 1968 Hong Kong flu and now this
year's SARS flu, which also has been traced to China's southern Guangdong
province, which includes Hong Kong.
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- Why do these virulent new viral strains come out of South
China?
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- Some virologists implicate the farming practices common
there. In southern provinces of China, farmers raise hens, ducks, pigs
and fish in one integrated system. They use the droppings and leftover
food from the pigs to feed the fowl. The fowl droppings, in turn, help
fertilize the fish ponds.
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- While it sounds like a perfect system, raising three
different species with no waste, the species may be exchanging viruses
among themselves through the feces.
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- The birds can pass avian flu viruses to swine, where
the two viruses co-mingle and form a new strain that is passed back to
the farmers, whose immune system cannot fight the new virus, as the theory
goes. The pigs, which have a genetic make-up more like humans, act as the
mixing vessel.
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- The 1968 Hong Kong flu strain, at least, was traced back
to ducks. That flu and its cousins have killed more than 250,000 Americans,
public-health officials estimate.
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- British zoologist Ernest Naylor and German virologist
Christoph Scholtissek first made the connection and warned of future superflu
outbreaks from such Chinese agricultural techniques in a 1988 article in
Nature.
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- Regarding SARS, "the most likely scenario is that
it has been circulating in another species in southern China, and human
beings came in contact with it this past autumn, perhaps in an agricultural
setting," said Dr. Stephen Morse, author of "Emerging Viruses."
"It is interesting that this part of Asia is the same geographic area
from which most known influenza pandemics have arisen."
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- The federal Centers for Disease Control is not ready
to commit to the theory that China's farming practices are to blame for
SARS, although some say the reluctance has more to do with international
politics and diplomacy than medicine.
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- "I can't confirm that it has anything to do with
the agricultural industry," said CDC spokeswoman Karen Hunter in a
phone interview from Atlanta. "We don't have any concrete reasons
why influenza sometimes comes out of Asia."
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- She notes that last century's first flu pandemic, which
struck in 1918, came out of Spain.
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- "Even though the last two flu pandemics did come
out of Asia," she said, "Asia is not the only place where we
see flu viruses mutating and changing."
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- But one U.S. public-health official, an epidemiologist,
says the CDC has long acknowledged the theory's merits.
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- "Certainly such old-world agriculture is not the
best of ideas," he said. "The primary reason we in the U.S. are
concerned about proper disposal of human and animal wastes is for reasons
of public health, not for aesthetic ones."
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- He added they don't yet understand that in mainland China,
which is still run by a communist government.
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- Chinese dissident Harry Wu says Chinese farmers also
feed human waste to pets, whose waste is fed to livestock.
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- "It is very common in China, in the rural areas,
for the dog to clean up the human bowel (movement)," he said in a
WorldNetDaily interview. "You know, the baby makes bowel on the floor
(and) the dog will come right in and eat it up."
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- "The whole environment is like that," Wu added.
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- He also cited the Chinese people's indiscriminate, omnivorous
diet as a possible concern.
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- "I don't know if these animals are one of the reasons
(for SARS), but it is true in the southern part of China that they eat
all kinds of animals," Wu said. "We make a joke that they eat
everything that flies except for airplanes, and they eat everything with
legs except the tables ö snails, turtles, chickens, raccoons. Even
some right now are eating the fetus, unborn babies, as a delicacy. That
is cannibalism."
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- Wu notes recent speculation by a Russian scientist who
posits that the SARS virus is man-made, invented by a Chinese military
lab as a biochemical weapon.
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- "I'm not sure about that," he said, "but
I wouldn't be surprised" if it's true.
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- Interestingly, influenza fatality rates are virtually
unknown. That's because there are no concrete figures for the number of
people who get the flu each year to calculate against the number of reported
deaths, Hunter says. Many who come down with the flu don't visit the doctor,
and therefore don't show up in the statistics.
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- But generally, the fatality rate for the common flu is
thought to be about 15 percent, which may be inflated given the incomplete
data for the denominator. The fatality rate for SARS, by comparison, is
estimated to be running between 4 percent and 10 percent so far.
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- Paul Sperry is Washington bureau chief for WorldNetDaily.
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- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32244
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