Veganist_ Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World - Kathy Freston [42]
Straight from the Source: Michael Greger, MD, on Factory Farming and Superbugs
Here’s what Dr. Greger says about the bugs that are germinating now.
KF: How likely are we to have a bird or swine flu that turns into something really deadly and widespread?
MG: Unfortunately we don’t know enough about the biology of these viruses to make accurate predictions, but influenza is definitely the disease to keep an eye on. AIDS has killed millions but is only fluid borne. Malaria has killed millions but is relatively restricted to equatorial regions. Flu viruses are the only known pathogen capable of infecting literally billions of people in a matter of months. Right now [early 2010] we are in the midst of a flu pandemic caused by the swine-origin influenza virus H1N1. Tens of millions of people have become infected and thousands of young people have died, but H1N1 is not particularly virulent. There are other flu viruses that have emerged in recent decades such as the highly “pathogenic” (disease-causing) bird flu H5N1 that may have the potential to cause much greater human harm.
KF: What kind of damage could it do in terms of population mortality?
MG: Currently H5N1 kills approximately 60 percent of those it infects, so you don’t even get a coin toss chance of survival. That’s a mortality rate on par with some strains of Ebola. Fortunately, only a few hundred people have become infected. Should a virus like H5N1 trigger a pandemic, though, the results could be catastrophic.
During a pandemic as many as 2 or 3 billion people can become infected. A 60 percent mortality rate is simply unimaginable. Unfortunately, it’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. Both China and Indonesia have reported sporadic outbreaks of the H5N1 bird flu in pigs and sporadic outbreaks of the new pandemic virus H1N1 in pigs as well. Theoretically, if a pig became coinfected with both strains, a hybrid mutant could arise with the human transmissibility of swine flu and the human lethality of bird flu. That’s the kind of nightmare scenario that keeps virologists up at night.
KF: How does a virus like that kill? What does it do to the body?
MG: Most often it starts with standard flulike symptoms—fever, cough, and muscle aches. Instead of just infecting the respiratory tract, though, H5N1 may spread throughout the body and infect the brain, for example, leaving victims in a coma. Other early symptoms atypical of regular seasonal flu include vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, chest pain, and bleeding from the nose and gums. Death is usually from acute fulminant respiratory distress, in which one basically drowns in one’s own blood-tinted respiratory secretions.
Most of the damage is actually done by one’s own immune system. H5N1 seems to trigger a “cytokine storm,” an overexuberant immune reaction to the virus. These cytokine chemical messengers set off such a massive inflammatory reaction that on autopsy the lungs of victims may be virus-free, meaning that your body wins, but in burning down the village in order to save it you may not live through the process. Indeed, the reason why young people may be so vulnerable is because they have the strongest immune systems, and it’s your immune system that may kill you.
KF: How easy is it to contract the virus?
MG: Catching a pandemic flu virus is essentially as easy as catching the regular seasonal flu. During a flu pandemic about one in five people may fall ill, but there are certainly ways to minimize your risk, by washing your hands and social distancing techniques. In a really severe pandemic, though, the advice would be to “shelter-in-place,” isolating yourself and your family in your home until the danger passes. During such a pandemic the Department of Home-land Security uses as a key planning assumption that the American population would be asked to self-quarantine for up to ninety days per wave