Hemagglutinin type 5 Neuraminidase type 1
What is that, I hear you people ask. Well, I’m sure you’re more familiar with its shortened name H5N1. No recognition? How about avian (bird) flu? Comprehende? =) Yeah, I’m back crapping about serious stuff after the week long hiatus.
Let’s see, where to start from eh? Ok, for those of you that read newspapers you’ll know that it’s supposedly the next pandemic disease that’s out to wipe at least 50 million people off the face of the planet and sicken about 1,800 million people (30% of the global population). At the moment, we are at Stage 3 (of 6) of the WHO Pandemic Alert system. Based on the current level of global preparedness, we would be in deep trouble if the crap hits the fan anytime in the next 3 years. Currently, the death toll seems very low (but it has a high mortality rate, so please avoid close, prolonged contact with birds people!) but according to this, it’s much higher than reported if it’s true! BTW, eating well cooked chicken wouldn’t make you sick with H5N1, so all of you can rest easy!
SciAm has a special report here, which would be very helpful for all those who are interested to know more. It’s a good place to start, IMHO. It is basically an update on the current situation (up till late October ’05 I think). It also contains all sorts of information from possible avenues of treatment under research, new vaccine technology, adjuvant (vaccine boosters), etc etc etc. I think you get my point.
In response to the special report, some experts gave their own comments, which actually sparked off a blog fight! Seriously, I never imagined that professionals would slug it out like that. But then, when people start calling you names, I guess politeness is the first thing that flies out the window.
Here is what happened. John Rennie, the Editor-in-Chief of SciAm happened to blog about an article by Wendy Orent, an anthropologist who argued that the entire H5N1 issue is over hyped here. Mr. Rennie thinks that prudence is the best course of action at the moment for organisations such as CDC and WHO to take. Ms. Orent then issued a rebuttal here, and here is a piece from Paul Ewald, an epidemiologist who also took issue with the points raised by the Editors of Effect Measure. The editors used the pseudonym Revere (the immortalised messenger in the Independence War), who describe themselves as "senior public health scientists and practitioners" whose names "would be immediately recognizable to many in the public health community." Revere argued that H5N1 could be a cause for concern. Ms. Orent & Mr. Ewald think that H5N1 will not mutate into something scary unless the conditions of the Western Front (during WW I in 1918) was replicated. That essentially means that without the trenches of WW I in Europe, the Spanish Flu would never have come into being. As Ms. Orent and Mr. Ewald were taking potshots at Revere, it naturally prompted a long acrimonious rebuttal here. It is a 4 part blog, and its quite in depth so be prepared if you want to delve into it. It’s nothing to difficult to understand if you have a good basic understanding of Biology, just that it can get a little tedious at times.
While the debate was going on, a co-author of the abovementioned special report dropped a line reminding that there are still plenty of uncertainties surrounding H5N1 here. To quote Ruben Donis, head of molecular biology at CDC, she said that ‘full-time flu research has been limited to such a small handful of people worldwide that a lot of questions they would love to have answered haven’t yet been addressed’. That would mean that the debate is essentially redundant since nobody knows enough to make a definite conclusion about the threat H5N1 poses to us.
I wouldn’t be going into any further details, since it would make my blog extremely lengthy if I do. But if you take your time going through the sites given here, I’m pretty sure that you’ll be far better informed than the average guy on the street and would be able to make far better decisions based on what is available here. =)
BTW, I’ve read something about seroprevalency and I don’t quite grasp the terminology. If any of you that reads this could, please help me out will ya?
For more updates on the H5N1, you can always go over here. That’s NewScientist’s site for their bird flu Special Report.
