Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
if taken more than foty-eight hours after symptom onset. It can take decades to develop vac-
cines for specific viruses. For example, after spending billions of dollars on research, scientists
have yet to produce viable vaccines for the viruses responsible for AIDS, Ebola, and hemor-
rhagic dengue fever. A recently discovered trait shared by most viruses, that has quite frighten-
ing implications, is their capacity for “gene swapping”—the ability to share genetic material
between different strains, potentially resulting in mutations that combine the deadly properties
of one strain with the contagious properties of another.
Experts are gravely concerned that this could happen with the extremely deadly H5N1
strain of avian flu, and it appears that this is what has already happened in the case of the less
deadly 2009 Mexican strain of swine flu virus, commonly referred to as the H1N1 swine flu.
DNA analysis performed on specimens from Spanish flu victims, taken from 1918 tissue
samples that were preserved in wax, indicate that the Spanish flu was originally an avian flu
virus that mutated into a swine flu virus before mutating into a human flu virus. According to
the CDC, the new strain of swine flu that showed up in Mexico during the spring of 2009 con-
tained gene sequences from North American and Eurasian swine flu, North American bird flu,
and North American human flu, and was quite similar to the 1918 Spanish flu, but nowhere
near as deadly.
Thus far, we have managed to dodge the bullet both with the avian flu and the H1N1 swine
flu. All attempts to contain the H1N1 flu strain via quarantine failed, as it rapidly spread around
the world, qualifying as a true “pandemic.” However, this strain of flu virus turned out to be
only slightly more lethal than even the average winter flu strain, and less contagious, so even
though hundreds of thousands of people got sick, no more people died (approximately 0.03 per-
cent fatality rate) than during an average flu season. The concern is that if a super deadly strain
of influenza, such as the H5N1 avian flu, were to gene swap with a highly infectious human
strain of flu, it could create a new flu strain having the high mortality rate of H5N1 (on the or-
der of 50 percent or more) combined with the highly infectious and easily transmitted traits of
more common flu strains. Experts believe it is not a question of “if” this will ever happen, but
“when” the Russian roulette game of viral gene swapping comes up with a “winning” combina-
tion that wreaks havoc on human society. When that day comes, all hell will break loose!
In addition, a significant and growing threat is cultivated right here in the United States on
our modern factory farms. Some bright researchers figured out that farm animals fed subclinic-
al doses of antibiotics grow faster than animals that eat regular feed, get sick less often, and
fewer animals are lost to disease. This has been a boon to the pharmaceutical industry (40 per-
