by Michael Greger, M.D.

February 26, 2004

The deadliest plague in human history was the influenza pandemic of
1918, which killed up to 50 million people around the world. Modern
flu strains tend to spare young healthy adults, but every few decades
a strain arises that can kill people in the prime of life. In 1918,
more than a quarter of Americans fell ill.[1] What started for
millions across the globe as a runny nose and a sore throat, ended
days later with people bleeding from their ears and nostrils and into
their lungs. The victims drowned in their own blood. Their
corpses--tinted blue from suffocation--were 'stacked like cordwood"
outside the morgues as cities ran out of coffins.[2]

Where did this disease come from? Brilliant medical detective work,
which included digging up corpses discovered frozen in the Alaskan
permafrost for tissue samples, recently pieced together the genetic
makeup of the virus. The disease came from bird flu.

The 1918 virus probably jumped species in crowded world war I army
camps in Europe where they were raised chickens for slaughter. That
flu would go on to bury more people than the world war.[3] The army
camp outbreaks started in 1917. It took a year before the virus had
enough human victims to mutate inside of before it could explode
upon the world. "That's what could happen in Asia ," noted one flu
expert this week, "It could be another year before it really gets
moving."[4]

We now know that bird flu is the original cause of all of these human
influenza "type A" viruses. Although the viruses can affect a wide
range of animals including pigs, horses and wild birds, the initial
source seems to be domesticated fowl such as chickens and turkeys.[5]

Over the last few decades meat and egg consumption has exploded in
the developing world, leading to industrial scale commercial chicken
farming and mass animal transport, favoring the emergence and spread
of influenza superstrains.[6] The World Animal Health Organization
blames changes in the global poultry industry, such as shorter
production cycles and greater animal densities, for the increased
risk of spawning epidemics.[7] Even backyard farms in Asia have
turned almost industrial, filling every square inch with chickens.
"As soon as you have that many animals in one spot you are likely to
get into trouble with disease," said Dr. Samuel Jutzi, director of
animal production and health at the U.N. Food and Agriculture
Organization.[8]

The World Health Organization also blames the present bird flu
outbreak on "intensive poultry production"[9]. As one infectious
disease expert noted, "There are a whole lot of practices in animal
husbandry that means we have got large numbers of animals all close
together with practices to give often a very short-term gain that may
not be sustainable in the long term, but may well have long-term
consequences that are not known, or not thought through at the
time."[10] The stress of intensive confinement alone on the birds'
immune systems increases the risk that factory farms will become the
breeding ground for the next global pandemic.[11]

According to a recent editorial in The Lancet, one of the most
prestigious medical journals in the world, "All human diseases to
emerge in the past 20 years have had an animal source..."[12] For
example, hepatitis B, a disease which now kills a million people
every year, probably appeared upon the world stage thanks to people
eating chimpanzee meat. Ebola, the virus that causes one's organs to
dissolve and kills up to 90% of people infected within a week, is
thought to have originally come from people eating gorilla meat. Of
course the disease doesn't limit itself to killing just those that
ate the flesh of their fellow primates. Once it's jumps species it
can spread throughout the human population.

The AIDS virus has now infected 50 million people. Where did it come
from? The leading theory is that human beings originally got it
through "direct exposure to animal blood and secretions as a result
of hunting, butchering, or other activities (such as consumption of
uncooked contaminated meat)..." (a competing theory is that the AIDS
virus was originally spread through vaccines manufactured using
chimpanzee kidneys).[13]

Historically, tuberculosis and measles emerged when humans started
herding cattle in large numbers. The SARS virus spread into the human
population because people were raising civet cats for their flesh.
Mad Cow disease is an other direct result of industrial practices and
now threatens the safety of the world's blood supply.[14] Animal
agriculture has become a public health hazard for more than those
that consume the meat.

The World Health Organization has described the speed at which this
new outbreak of bird flu in Asia has spread as "historically
unprecedented."[15] And the human lethality of the strain is
ferocious--killing 70% of people it infects.[16] The 1918 strain only
killed 2.5% of it's victims.[17]

Although fifty million chickens are dead, only a few people have
become infected, though. The fear is that the bird flu will spread to
a pig or person already infected with a human strain of influenza.
Once this happens, a deadly gene swap can take place in which the
human transmissibility of the human flu virus combines with the
lethality of the bird flu virus. The World Health Organization in a
conference today reiterated that conditions are "ripe" for the
emergence of just such a virus that could trigger the next global
pandemic.[18]

No war, no plague, no famine has ever killed so many in so short a
time as the 1918 influenza pandemic.[19] One scientist observed in
1918 that "civilization could have disappeared within a few more
weeks." At that time, though, there were less than 2 billion people
in the world and no mass international commercial air travel.
Scientists today fear a global influenza pandemic could be many times
worse even with modern medical advances.

According to The Lancet editorial, vaccination would not be a viable
option due to the lethality of the strain, antiviral drugs are not
effective enough, and, since influenza is more contagious than
diseases like SARS, quarantine measures are unlikely to control a
human outbreak. The editorial concludes, "In view of the mortality of
human influenza associated with this strain, the prospect of a
worldwide pandemic is massively frightening."[20]

Humanity's lust for flesh not only kills billions of animals every
year directly, but threatens the health of our planet and may
threaten our health in more ways than we know.