Edge of the Abyss - The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu - page 52

female worker at a chicken-processing plant died a few days later, followed in mid-October by a fourteen-
year-old farm girl. The most unexpected victims in October, however, were cats, big and small. As their
horrified keepers stood helpless, more than eighty Bengal tigers at the famed Sriracha Tiger Zoo near
Bangkok perished in spasms of viral pneumonia. They had been fed raw chicken. Similarly, GenZ was
identified in house cats, presumably as a result of their feeding on infected poultry or wild birds. Influ-
enza experts were dismayed because cats had long been considered resistant to all varieties of influenza
A. They also discovered that cats could pass the virus to each other, making felines suddenly suspect as
significant flu vectors and possible incubators. 224
Then, on 26 October, Europe was provided with a firsthand demonstration of how comprehensively
GenZ was spreading through Southeast Asian fauna after a Thai smuggler was stopped at the Brussels air-
port; he had two tiny rare eagles hidden in a PVC pipe in his hand luggage. The man was eventually let go,
and the birds were put into quarantine. A few days later they tested positive for H5N1, setting off a frantic
hunt to identify passengers who might have had inadvertent contact with the smuggler. The veterinarian
who was called in to euthanize the little eagles (as well as the four hundred other birds in quarantine at
the airport) developed a mild but nonetheless alarming case of conjunctivitis. Belgium's leading influenza
expert, Rene Snacken, at the Scientific Institute of Public Health, warned New Scientist : “We were very,
very lucky. It could have been a bomb for Europe.” 225
A few weeks later, Ken Shortridge, the senior member of the famed Hong Kong team that had battled
H5N1 in 1997 and SARS in 2003, told a scientific conference that the increasing interspecies transmission
of avian influenza risked something even more profound than a new human pandemic. “If this virus gets
into bird life beyond poultry,” he warned, “we could wreck the global ecosystem.” Eight years of research
on H5N1 had convinced him that this cunning little Darwinian demon was capable of ecocide—the wip-
ing out of entire species. 226
There was no shortage of dismaying visions in the late fall of 2004. When Newsweek asked a leading
microbiologist whether a pandemic was possible, he replied, “I don't think we completely understand why
it hasn't happened already.” 227 Indeed, there was broad agreement among researchers that an H5 pandem-
ic was not simply imminent, it was “late.” Getting this urgent message across to news media, the non-
specialist medical community, NGOs, and ultimately, to presidents, prime ministers, and kings the world
over was the urgent task entrusted to the WHO (in theory, the medical conscience of humanity). It was an
uneven and divided effort compromised by undue deference to the interests of powerful states, including
China and the United States, which generated some lurid headlines and rhetorical promises but none of
the truly decisive action urged by experts on the ground.
In late October, a conference at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island, sponsored by the Sabin Vaccine
Institute, brought WHO authorities, U.S. health officials, and drug manufacturers together to discuss a
global vaccine strategy in face of the pandemic threat. This dialogue was resumed in Geneva in mid-
November under WHO auspices. A parade of experts complained that “very little action” had been taken
to avert pandemic “devastation,” and the WHO's Klaus Stohr told delegates, “If we continue as we are
now, there will be no vaccine available, let alone antivirals, when the next pandemic starts.” He also
played to the U.S. obsession with terrorism by urging counties “to raise the profile of pandemic prepared-
ness as a matter of national security.” 228 An Aventis-Pasteur executive, however, warned public-health
officials that manufacturers were prepared to develop new vaccines only if governments were willing to
underwrite the costs of research and guarantee sales. The position of the drug industry, in other words,
was “no vaccine” unless broad profit margins were guaranteed. This excluded participation by most poor
countries. Apart from South Africa and Brazil, which already produce small quantities of annual flu vac-
cine, the prospects for a truly “global” vaccine that would be available in the Third World were bleak at
best. A third WHO-sponsored meeting in Bangkok at the end of November elicited new pledges from