Friday, June 20, 2003
ONCE AGAIN, THE TIMES SKIRTS
THE PIG QUESTION
By Charles Ortleb
In today's New York Times, Lawrence Altman once again carefully avoids talking about pigs, the most obvious probable source of the SARS-associated coronavirus. With Keith Bradsheer, the former CDC employee reports that "Another concern is that researchers in Hong Kong and Guangdong say they have found viruses nearly identical to the SARS virus in several species of wild animals sold for meat in local marketplaces. Nobody knows whether those animals long harbored the disease or happened to catch it in a market stall from some other animal. Nor does anybody know whether the disease passed once from animals to humans in a fluke incident or was transmitted in a manner easily repeated. All of these factors will affect the likelihood of recurrent outbreaks."
Well, if nobody knows the SARS serostatus of all the edible wild animals in China, we do hope that somebody will try and find out one of these months. And we know that China can be trusted provide an honest answer to this question.
Meanwhile, if the thought of eating ham from a pig with AIDS doesn't appeal to you, we suggest you read about the PRRS epidemic in pigs in Canada and the USA. Next time you eat bacon, you may want to fry it in protease inhibitors and a strong antibiotic.
Charles Ortleb is the author of The Closing Argument and the co-author of The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Follies.
THE PIG QUESTION
By Charles Ortleb
In today's New York Times, Lawrence Altman once again carefully avoids talking about pigs, the most obvious probable source of the SARS-associated coronavirus. With Keith Bradsheer, the former CDC employee reports that "Another concern is that researchers in Hong Kong and Guangdong say they have found viruses nearly identical to the SARS virus in several species of wild animals sold for meat in local marketplaces. Nobody knows whether those animals long harbored the disease or happened to catch it in a market stall from some other animal. Nor does anybody know whether the disease passed once from animals to humans in a fluke incident or was transmitted in a manner easily repeated. All of these factors will affect the likelihood of recurrent outbreaks."
Well, if nobody knows the SARS serostatus of all the edible wild animals in China, we do hope that somebody will try and find out one of these months. And we know that China can be trusted provide an honest answer to this question.
Meanwhile, if the thought of eating ham from a pig with AIDS doesn't appeal to you, we suggest you read about the PRRS epidemic in pigs in Canada and the USA. Next time you eat bacon, you may want to fry it in protease inhibitors and a strong antibiotic.
Charles Ortleb is the author of The Closing Argument and the co-author of The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Follies.
Thursday, June 19, 2003
HOW MANY PIGS IN CHINA AND
CANADA ARE CARRIERS OF THE
SARS-ASSOCIATED CORONAVIRUS?
Nobody seems to want to talk about pigs and SARS. And what about the dead pigs in China's Guangdong Province?
While the World Health Organization continues to warn that as long as there are animal reservoirs for the SARS-associated coronavirus (SAC), SARS will still be a problem. It's amazing that the discovery of the virus in wild pigs hasn't raised the alarm that pigs could be the fastest way the virus could spread throughout the human population. It seems that from a statistical point of view, it is more likely that the 30% of the first SARS cases in China who were food handlers were more likely to be handling pork than barbecued civet cat. The mainstream media likes the civet cat story and is sticking with it.
More than likely the problem is that nobody wants to go there. SARS in pigs implies an epidemic that would be virtually impossible to control and one that would create economic pandemonium. It is just as unthinkable as the idea that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is actually AIDS which just couldn't be true.
Several weeks ago, before the Chinese researchers announced the had found SAC in wild pigs, the World Health Organization made a comforting statement that pigs couldn't be infected. That was based on a Canadian study which we finally located. Resource News International via COMTEX reported on May 14 that "Early results indicate that pigs and chickens are not showing symptoms of severe acute respiratory syndrome after being injected with the disease, said science researcher Hana Weingartl of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA)."
The report noted that "tests to find the effects of SARS on livestock have been performed on 5-week-old pigs and 6-week-old chickens. The experiments were requested by the Paris-based International Organization for Animal Health, after speculation that SARS was being spread from pigs and chickens."
The study seems to have been aimed at determining if the animals got sick from SAC, not if they could be healthy reservoirs of the virus. If this really is what they did, and if this the study that WHO based its pronouncement on, then the kindest thing we can say is that the World Health Organization's SARS research effort is in the hand of morons.
We're still waiting for someone to test the sick pigs in China's Guangdong Province.
CANADA ARE CARRIERS OF THE
SARS-ASSOCIATED CORONAVIRUS?
Nobody seems to want to talk about pigs and SARS. And what about the dead pigs in China's Guangdong Province?
While the World Health Organization continues to warn that as long as there are animal reservoirs for the SARS-associated coronavirus (SAC), SARS will still be a problem. It's amazing that the discovery of the virus in wild pigs hasn't raised the alarm that pigs could be the fastest way the virus could spread throughout the human population. It seems that from a statistical point of view, it is more likely that the 30% of the first SARS cases in China who were food handlers were more likely to be handling pork than barbecued civet cat. The mainstream media likes the civet cat story and is sticking with it.
More than likely the problem is that nobody wants to go there. SARS in pigs implies an epidemic that would be virtually impossible to control and one that would create economic pandemonium. It is just as unthinkable as the idea that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is actually AIDS which just couldn't be true.
Several weeks ago, before the Chinese researchers announced the had found SAC in wild pigs, the World Health Organization made a comforting statement that pigs couldn't be infected. That was based on a Canadian study which we finally located. Resource News International via COMTEX reported on May 14 that "Early results indicate that pigs and chickens are not showing symptoms of severe acute respiratory syndrome after being injected with the disease, said science researcher Hana Weingartl of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA)."
The report noted that "tests to find the effects of SARS on livestock have been performed on 5-week-old pigs and 6-week-old chickens. The experiments were requested by the Paris-based International Organization for Animal Health, after speculation that SARS was being spread from pigs and chickens."
The study seems to have been aimed at determining if the animals got sick from SAC, not if they could be healthy reservoirs of the virus. If this really is what they did, and if this the study that WHO based its pronouncement on, then the kindest thing we can say is that the World Health Organization's SARS research effort is in the hand of morons.
We're still waiting for someone to test the sick pigs in China's Guangdong Province.
