Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Contracting animal diseases

Breed them, feed them and then eat them – contracting animal diseases frequently might just be their way of getting back at us

Again, an entirely new variety of human influenza, ‘Chicken Ebola,’ surfaced in the human population of Hong Kong in 1997. It was then that Hong Kong’s entire poultry population (ducks, geese and chickens) was slaughtered. SARS or bird flu also started among the Orientals and culling of several poultry animals was done to avoid it from gaining pandemic proportions. As far as the recurrence of these influenzas is concerned, influenza experts remind that aquatic birds maintain all the genes of all influenza viruses in the world and they transmit it to other species periodically. Even if these viruses are very ancient, they still have the capacity to evolve, to acquire new genes and new hosts. So, chances of such troubles hitting mankind again can’t be ignored.

While the 1918 Spanish flu took its toll in the pre-penicillin era, new types of viruses always pose a threat. It is quite clear that breeding farms for poultry and pig are the breeding grounds for such viruses. Well, the increased frequency of recurrence of such influenzas in the past one decade could be nature’s way of telling us that culling humans too isn’t as difficult!




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