New Scientist

I read Focus and New Scientist on the way back from London. They were writing about the threat of bird flu, mentioning the way it has recently been covered in some of the press. This stems from a government sponsored scientist saying that he thought there was little threat from the disease.

I wrote about this when I first saw the article on the net because I was so astounded by it. New Scientist seems to feel the same now. I was even more amazed as I read how the disease is mutating and crossing into different species. I haven't got the article in front of me and for the past months haven't been keeping up with the progression of the disease because I have had health problems of my own to get through.

It seems though that this latest version of bird flu is able to infect many different species through different mutations. It is the first known disease like this that can cause such havoc through many different species and the magazine was speculating if it might see the extinction of some endangered species. The more the disease spreads through different species the more chance of a dangerous mutation arising that will cause of lot of problems for people.

The article was pointing to poultry production as the main source of the disease and saying that methods of raising poultry must be looked into because at the moment it makes things much easier for the bird flu virus to develop different strains. Though it is known that other human flu pandemics have stemmed from bird flu in the past. But anyway the crowding and narketing of birds is giving the virus a good chance of mutating and spreading at the moment.

No one knows what will happen in the future. Viruses can lessen their potency with time and there is always a chance that this one won't mutate into a form of human flu because it has exchanged genetic material with a form of the human flu virus. But then again there is the possibility that it could. The way it seems to be able to affect so many different species and is so adaptable is worrying.

I always hope that people will work together to find ways of protecting each other out of some kind of empathy with each other. It would seem the sensible thing to do and the best way for people to survive and prosper. You'd think nature would have made us supportive of each other for the survival of the species!!!! Researchers are always trying to find reasons along these lines to explain various human traits but nature seems to have missed this one out to some extent. Therefore we have violence in different ways going through to genocide and war. You'd think with a threat like this that nature would have provided us with some kind of wanting to join together and protect each other because that would make it more likely that these sort of problems could be easily fought and overcome. You'd think there would be a rush of consciousness wanting to do our best to fight to protect everyone.

If only ..................

That we would be preparing for mass production of any vaccine found by making many many means of production. But it doesn't happen.