Flu Immune 500

The bird flu is an avian borne virus that passes from bird to bird, or from birds to people. Although there have been no cases of bird flu in the United States and Canada, it is believed that the current bird flu, which has shown up in Asia, will one day spread throughout the globe.

One concern is that domesticated birds that are raised for food, such as turkeys, duck s and chickens, can easily be infected. Eating fowl that has been exposed to the virus isn’t a threat; heat from the cooking process destroys it. Should the virus spread, the greatest danger posed would be to those who raise chickens and turkeys for human consumption. Of the 100 victims in China, all of them are believed to have worked on bird farms.

One positive is that the bird virus cannot spread from human to human; as it stands now, human beings can only get it from birds. So, why the concern?

Lessons from the Spanish Flu

As researchers have learned over the years, the flu virus mutates; there is a very real possibility that the current bird flu virus (H5N1) could morph into a contagion that transmits easily from person to person.

In 1918, 50 million people died, worldwide, from the Spanish flu; the virus entered cities with a vengeance, affecting up to 28% of the population. For decades, it was thought that the Spanish flu was a form of swine flu, which is passed from pigs to humans, and, more devastatingly, from humans to humans. The flu pandemics of 1957 and 1968 were swine flu instigated, so it stands to reason that the assumption was that the Spanish flu was another, especially virulent form of the swine flu as well.

Enter Dr. Jeffrey Taubenberger, Chief of the Medical Pathology Department of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington. Located at the Institute is a warehouse of autopsy tissue; Taunenberger’s “aha” moment came when he remembered that two World War I soldiers frozen inside of the warehouse, had succumbed to the Spanish flu.

The Postman Always Rings Twice

Dr. Taubenberger was also aware that nearly an entire Alaskan village was wiped out from the same flu. Once a month, the postman would bring the mail; one day in 1918 he brought the Spanish flu along with said mail. One of the villagers, a woman who had been buried since then in the frozen ground, was exhumed. Dr. Taunenberger examined her lung tissue, as well as that of the two soldiers.

He discovered that researchers had been wrong; the Spanish flu was not a form of the swine flu. It was a strain of bird flu.

Why, then, was the virus so contagious? Dr. Taubenberger discovered that it had mutated into a strain that easily passed from person to person; exactly what scientists fear will ultimately happen in the case of the Asian bird flu.

However, because of Dr. Taubenberger’s tireless efforts, the FDA approved the first bird flu virus vaccine in 2007. It’s currently stockpiled by the U.S. government, and is at the forefront of a well coordinated “flu plan, should the situation warrant.”

For now, the bird flu is not an imminent threat. And thanks to ongoing research, by the time it reaches the shores of North America, we will be ready to take it on.