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Thu Dec 21, 2006 at 20:13:57 PM EST
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John Oxford
BOOK REVIEWED-
The Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching
by Michael Greger
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| DemFromCT :: Review by John Oxford of "Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching" by Michael Greger |
Greger is a clever writer. The book is a zinger, not deep like John Barry's The Great Influenza (Viking, 2004; see Nature 429, 345; 2004), but more worldly, broader and more scientific. It is also more global in its approach than most US books, but I suppose it has to be as the United States has not yet experienced H5N1.
Fortunately, the world has woken up to the threat of H5N1. The US government has thrown $9 billion at the problem, much more than against smallpox and polio combined. Every related research programme in the United States will benefit. The ripples have even reached Britain. There is now an axis of flu research, but will we join it? Yes please!
However, the book fails to confront the question I am asked daily: "Why are you so worried about 151 deaths from H5N1?" Well, go back to 1916, to Etaples in northern France, where a form of flu causing heliotrope cyanosis (a characteristic lavender coloration of the face) with a case fatality of 60% was beginning to spread. There were 145 cases. At some point in the next two years it mutated to become more infectious and 30 times less virulent. Then it killed 50 million people. Doesn't this ring a nasty bell?
link to the review |
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