OUR MOST DEADLY DISEASES HAVE MADE THE LEAP FROM ANIMALS TO HUMANS

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

 

See this, from Animal Net, today,

 

Phil

 

OUR MOST DEADLY DISEASES HAVE MADE THE LEAP FROM

ANIMALS TO HUMANS

April 29, 2003 Knight-Ridder Tribune

Stephen Smith, The Boston Globe

 

It all started with the fruit bats, and, according to this story ended

with 1.1 million pigs slaughtered, 105 humans dead, and the

discovery of a new peril to mankind. The story says that when the

curtain rose on Nipah virus in 1998, it was a drama in three acts,

spotlighting performances from bats, pigs, and humans in a story

as old as the first microbes to spread disease and misery on

Earth. Somehow the virus catapulted from one species to another

and then a third, with profoundly varying health consequences.

Now, disease detectives hot on the trail of the coronavirus

implicated in the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or

SARS, are increasingly suspicious that a similar phenomenon

unfolded with that disease, which appeared out of nowhere one

autumn day last year on the lower lip of China. They're looking at

everything from primates to the exotic reptiles that wind up on

dinner tables in southern China as potential routes of transmission

for the virus to humans. The story says that three out of every four

newly emerging diseases striking humans originated in animals

and somehow jumped from one species to another, and that pigs,

it turns out, are remarkably efficient incubators for viruses to

mutate into new forms. A pig can be exposed to a flu virus

transmitted by a bird and then to a second virus spread by a

human. Once both viruses set up shop inside the pig, they can

begin swapping genetic secrets, with the result being a viral

recombination -- and a novel strain of the flu.

 

Best regards,

 

 

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