Tag: China

SARS, Influenza and Meat?

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome has been a major topic in the news recently, which means it was also an opportunity for animal rights groups and individuals to spread the usual nonsense and lies about zoonosis (diseases that humans may acquire from animals).

One of the major errors concerns the 1918 influenza pandemic. For such a major event with plenty of books, articles and web pages available, you’d think they could at least get this right, but alas, no.

Michael Greger, MD, weighed in with this bit of outdated information,

Animal agriculture is not just a public health hazard for those that consume meat. In fact, the single worst epidemic in recorded history, the 1918 influenza pandemic, has been blamed on the livestock industry. In that case, the unnatural density and proximity of ducks and pigs raised for slaughter probably led to the deaths of 20 to 40 million people. . . . All of these influenza strains seem to have arisen in the same region of southern China where intensive systems of animal agriculture have become a breeding ground for new killer viruses.

PETA chimes in claiming that,

The influenza epidemic of 1918 originated in pigs.

But these claims are completely dishonest distortions of what is known about the 1918 epidemic.

The 1918 influenza pandemic did not originate in Asia. The first known cases of the disease, in fact, occurred Kansas in May 1918. Five hundred soldiers became infected with a mysterious new disease, and 48 of them died. It is most likely the disease originated either in Europe or the United States — soldiers traveling both ways across the Atlantic would have quickly spread the virus.

Did the disease arise from animal agriculture? To answer that question, first consider one of the more astounding aspects of the 1918 influenza pandemic — we actually have samples of the disease that were preserved (in some cases because the bodies of victims were buried in places like Alaska, where the ground remained frozen) and have been partially sequenced.

As far as ducks are concerned, a study of waterfowl from the Smithsonian Institution’s collection found that this was unlikely. The Smithsonian has a huge collection of liquid-preserved waterfowl from which it extracted genetic material. The genetic material was tested for a specific gene that made the 1918 influenza strain so deadly. Researchers who studied the genetic material concluded that (emphasis added), “Comparisons of this sequence with that of the 1918 pandemic virus suggest that the pandemic viral HA gene was not derived directly from an avian source.”

But did the disease spread from pigs to humans? The short answer is that nobody knows, and that it is just as likely that the disease spread from human beings to pigs.

The 1918 strain could definitely infect both humans and pigs, but the 1918 pandemic was the first time that swine influenza was recognized as a disease — this was something entirely new for both pigs and human beings. The swine influenza was isolated in 1930 and human form of the disease in 1933, and they were similar enough for researchers to conclude that they were essentially the same virus.

Dr. Richard D. Slemons, DVM at Ohio State University, writes of the question of how the pandemic started,

Since swine flu was reported as a new disease entity in pigs in 1918, it was further believed that the agent was originally transmitted from humans to pigs and subsequently became established in pigs. Retrospective serologic investigations provided further data supporting the belief that the same agent was responsible for the 1918 influenza outbreaks in humans and pigs. However, these data did not provide insight into whether the virus went from humans to pigs or vice versa. The question as to whether the virus originated in humans or pigs, or even another species and then jumped to both pigs and humans, remains unanswered.

Why can’t groups like PETA ever get even basic facts right?

Sources:

SARS: Another deadly virus from the meat industry. Michael Greger, April 13, 2003.

SARS Epidemic Caused by Meat?. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, April 2003.

Influenza: Past Clues Guide Future Defense. PulmonaryReviews.Com, January 2002.

History, Structure, and Function of Swine Influenza Virus. Richard D. Slemons.

Seeking the 1918 Spanish Influenza Virus. Jeffery K. Taubenberger, American Society for Microbiology, July 1999.

Origin and evolution of the 1918 “Spanish” influenza virus hemagglutinin gene. Reid AH, Fanning TG, Hultin JV, Taubenberger JK, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 1999 Feb 16;96(4):1164-6.

1918 Human Influenza Epidemic No Longer Linked to Birds. Smithsonian Institution, Press Release, August 2, 2002.

China Takes a Beating Over SARS Intransigence

China’s reputation in the world community has taken a beating over its failure to promplty and accurately report about case of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in its country.

World Health Organization Director-General Gro Harlme Brundltnat criticized the Chinese government recently for failing to report on SARS cases in China until after the disease had become a worldwide epidemic.

In fact, China was so paranoid about SARS that it lied to its own citiziens and blocked some communications without the outside world in a feeble attempt to prevent information about SARS going either in or out.

The first SARS cases occured in China’s southern Guangdong province in November 2002, but China did not allow experts from WHO visit the area until late March 2003.

Even now China can’t seem to help but lie about the diseae. It claims taht 19 people have been infeced with the disease in Beijing, for example, and that 4 of them have died. But the BBC quotes unidentified health workers in Beijing as saying that at least 100 people have been infected with the emerging virus.

As far as the virus itself is concerned, it is intersting to compare its emergence and the reaction to the disease with the doomsaying nightmares of yesteryear of civilization-killing diseases. Once cases started appearing outside of Chian it took almost no time at all for health warnings and travel advisories to go into place. Heatlh agencies spread the word and took extra precautions agaist the disease. Within a few months researchers had posted genetic information online about the virus — a scene straight out of a science fiction film.

Yes the world’s vulnerability to the spread of emerging diseases is now greater than ever before, but so are the tools and methods we have to deal with such outbreaks.

Sources:

China accused of Sars ‘cover-up’. The BBC, April 9, 2003.

WHO Criticizes China on SARS reporting. VOA News, April 7, 2003.

Conspiracy Theories About Google

Dave Winer is apparently impressed by Daniel Brandt’s anti-Google rantings. But as this Salon.Com article documents, Brandt is a nutty conspiracy theorist (just go a few links deep at his NameBase.Org who is pissed off because *his* page about Donald Rumsfeld, and a whole host of other people, doesn’t show up very high in Google searches.

I particularly love the brief explanation Brandt offers of why Google’s PageRank sucks,

It’s democratic in the same way that capitalism is democratic. You could have the cure for cancer on the Web and not find it in Google because ‘important’ sites don’t link to it.

But, of course, if there were a cure for cancer posted on the web, then it is likely that lots of people would link to it, much like many scientists would end up citing a paper that outlined a successful cure for cancer.

What Brandt wants is for Google to be democratic in the same way that the Democratic Republic of North Korea is Democratic.

In fact, as Salon notes, Brandt believes that if you search on “Donald Rumsfeld” his page about Rumsfeld should be shown before Rumsfeld’s DoD biography page, even though it is largely useless and almost impossible to navigate (the main problem with NameBase is that it is an index of citations largely of the conspiracy literature which Brandt has personally read).

Update: A good example of one of Brandt’s nutty conspiracy theories his his speculation about China’s blocking of Google in which Brandt argues that “China may be well-advised to block the use of U.S. engines to protect their own national security” because Google may be sharing data about Chinese users with the National Security Agency which would, in Brandt’s mind, “put the NSA at a tremendous advantage in determining where pro-U.S. sentiment may exist in China.”

Wacky Proposal for a Rice Cartel

Sometimes there are stories which are so self-refuting that it’s hard to provide further commentary. Such is the announcement that China, India, Pakistan, Thailand and Vietnam are investigating ways to cartelize world rice markets. They want to do for rice what OPEC has done for oil.

Rice prices have been in free fall since 1997, losing more than a third of their value in just 5 years. World projections show rice production continuing to increase, so the price of rice is likely to fall even further over the next few years while global consumption is projected to decline.

Under those conditions a cartel is a great idea for producers, but how do they ever expect to enforce cartel agreements? OPEC has had a nightmare enforcing its cartel agreements on oil which is a relatively easy commodity to track and exclude potential competitors (not to mention monitor violators). Since rice can be grown throughout most of the world, there is almost no way cartel efforts can succeed.

Ironically, each of the governments involved has had disastrous experience with state subsidies and internal control of food markets. Apparently they believe that if they simply try the same failed policies on a bigger scale that they might finally work. Don’t bet on it.

Source:

Rice producers in ‘cartel’ talks. The BBC, October 9, 2002.

United Nations Population Fund Head Speaks Out Against Potential War With Iraq

The head of the United Nations Population Fund, Dr. Thoraya Obaid, said at a recent conference that a United States war with Iraq would “open the gates of hell” and that the way to fight terrorism and oppression was through tackling poverty.

Obaid told BBC News Online,

Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League, said last month that war against Iraq would ‘open the gates of hell’ in the Middle East, with instability across the region.

He was right, nobody wants war, and I pray that this one will be averted, because if it breaks out it will destroy people, lives and futures.

To fight terrorism you have to fight the root causes of injustice — poverty, disease, joblessness. Nobody can live without hope.

If by 2015 we can realize the Millennium Development Goals, which aim to halve global poverty, then we’ll be turning our faces against injustice.

First, the Millennium Development Goals are largely a bad joke — just another attempt by the United Nations to talk the world out of poverty. Look at Obaid’s own region of the Middle East. It is one of the few areas of the world that has been declining economically for the last couple decades. If anything, the Middle East is too stable with theocratic dictatorships having a stranglehold on the regions.

Second, Obaid apparently would just write off Iraqi citizens as well as the millions in the region that would be threatened should acquire nuclear weapons.

This is not to say that the case for a war against Iraq is cut and dried or even that it makes sense, but Obaid’s reasons for opposing a war don’t make a lot of sense since it’s hard to imagine the Middle East having fewer prospects than it already has.

Interestingly Obaid has no problem with lives being destroyed when it comes to forced abortion. She also complained to the BBC about the U.S. cutoff of funding to UNFPA that would have went to China,

That’s 12% of our total funding. It really is a crisis for us. We have nothing to do with abortion at all. So our other programmes are now going to suffer because of an issue we don’t even touch.

That’s just nonsense. UNFPA spending frees up money for China to spend enforcing its one child policy. All China has to do is allocate the money it spends on the one child policy on alternative family planning-related activities.

Source:

UN population head’s war warning. Alex Kirby, The BBC, October 9, 2002.

U.S. Under Fire for Withdrawing UNFPA Funds

In July the United States drew fire for its decision to withdraw $34 million in funds from the United Nations Population Fund. The $34 million would have been spent on family planning efforts in China, but the United States maintains that the money would have ended up going to Chinese agencies that coerce women into having abortions and sterilization procedures.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that,

After careful consideration . . . we came to the conclusion that the UN Population Fund monies go to Chinese agencies that carry out coercive programs. Secretary of State Colin Powell decided that . . . US funds for family planning and reproductive health will be spent through the United States Agency for International Development programs and not through UNFPA.

Both China and the United Nations criticized the move.

The UNFPA argued that its activities in China do not involve aiding coerced abortions or sterilizations. UNFPA director of information Stirling Scruggs told The BBC, “We are very sad, and we are shocked because we have never been involved in coercion in China or anywhere else in the world.”

That is a very odd sort of bifurcation. The UNFPA’s view seems to be that it is okay to work with governmental organizations that engage in coercive practices as long as the UNFPA’s work is focused on noncoercive methods. That seems to be an extreme case of splitting hairs. As the State Department noted,

UNFPA’s support of, and involvement in, China’s population planning activities allows the Chinese Government to implement more effectively its programme of coerced abortion.

The UNFPA’s idea that if it takes care of the noncoercive programs and leaves China to deal with the coercive aspects that it has no moral culpability in the matter is absurd.

Sources:

China attacks US baby fund cuts. The BBC, July 23, 2002.

US to axe family planning funds. The BBC, July 22, 2002.