Tuesday, November 11, 2003
AS WE APPROACH THE NEW SARS SEASON,
WE ARE REPRINTING AN OPEN LETTER THAT
WAS PUBLISHED IN THIS SPACE IN JUNE
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE DOCTORS AND NURSES IN TORONTO
Dear Doctors and Nurses of Toronto,
You have just been through Hell.
I've been following your story since the begining of the SARS epidemic.
Some of you have seen friends and colleagues suffer. Some of you have seen patients die. Some of you have been had the illness and recovered. Some of you have gotten the illness and feel like you will never be back to normal. Some of you fear that your illness will relapse and you'll have to go through it all again. All of you have been traumatized and your work conditions have been trying, to say the least. Many of you do not feel adequately compensated for what you have been through.
None of you want to see this happen again. Many of you must be on edge about statements that SARS could be seasonal and that come this autumn or winter, you might all have to go through a similar or worse crisis. You worry about your families and you worry about your future in the medical field. Is it possible you could end up spending the rest of your lives working in space suits to protect yourself from a SARS infection?
Most of you assume that the best minds in the medical field are working hard to understand SARS and that nobody is playing games or putting any financial agenda ahead of the goal of ending SARS as a health threat.
Since the beginning of the SARS epidemic I have been suggesting that pigs should be looked at closely as the possible source of SARS. For over a decade I have been writing about the respiratory diseases in pigs and when I first heard that SARS had broken out in a part of China which has a lot of sick pigs, I began writing about a possible link betwen SARS and a wide array of respiratory pathogens in pigs which include porcine coronavirus.
The World Health Organization has frequently spoken out about the need to identify the animal reservoir from which SARS sprang. Supposedly, the first animals found with SARS-associated coronavirus were civet cats which are sold in exotic animal markets in Guangdong Province in China. Unfortunately, because the virus was first found in civet cats, it was assumed that they must be the primary and only source of the SARS-associated coronavirus. To this very day, publications as prestigious as the Washington Post keep oversimplifying the matter by talking about civet cats as the source of SARS.
The problem is that since the civet cat research, the SARS-associated coronavirus has been found in snakes, bats, and perhaps most importantly, wild pigs. Finding the virus in pigs is most disturbing because 30% of the original cases in Guangdong Province were in foodhandlers. It seems reasonable to hypothesize that such a high a percentage suggests that the foodhandlers were handling pork or chicken rather than civet cats.
A very revealing story about the possible SARS connection to pigs appeared in the Baltimore Sun on May 14th. Gady A. Epstein, of the Baltimore Sun Foreign Staff, wrote a fascinating story about a farmer in the Chinese area where SARS is thought to have originated. Epstein found a farm where what sounds like SARS-like epidemic in pigs may have occurred. Epstein interviewed a woman named Zheng Haocai who lives with her husband on a farm south of Guangzhou. Her shack of a farmhouse is "cobbled together out of aluminum, lumber, tarpaper and plastic sheeting." According to Epstein, "Zheng is unable to afford feed for her pigs, so they eat factory and restaurant garbage, served out of blue plastic barrels of unidentifiable dark sludge that she buys for $2.50 a barrel."
In what could turn out to be the most important reporting on SARS to date, Epstein writes that "at feeding time, her chickens join the feast, pecking near the porkers and, in the end stall, among a handful of pigs set apart from the others. This small group, Zheng said, had recovered from a strange virus that struck dozens of her pigs with flu and diarrhea a few months ago." And Epstein reports that the woman said, "This year we've had a lot of pigs get sick, and even when I give them medicine, they don't get better."
Epstein also reported that "a few feet from the pen lies an open box filled with empty syringes, used medicine bottles and torn packets of fever remedies that Zheng used with little success. Out of a group of 80 pigs she bought this year, she said, half died." Epstein reported that the woman said, "They got fever and didn't want to eat."
Every doctor and nurse in Toronto and the rest of the world has an investment in knowing whether the pigs in Guangdong Province are infected with the SARS-associated coronavirus. There is no indication that the CDC or the World Health Organization is in any hurry to thoroughly investigate the matter.
According to the High Plains Journal, a study was conducted by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency into whether young pigs in Canada could transmit the virus. The study is shoddy to say the least. According to the study, there was some replication by the SARS-associated coronavirus but the pigs didn't get sick and didn't seem to spread the virus. Some replication? Despite it's claims that pigs are not involved, the study doesn't prove that pigs of a wide variety of ages and health conditions in China aren't carriers of the SARS-associated coronavirus. If anything, the fact that pigs can be transiently infected seems to call for more research, not stonewalling.
One thing that caught my eye early in my own SARS investigation was a study of pigs done in Japan. The research on several hundred pigs in Japan suggested that coronaviruses move back and forth with great ease between people and pigs. If the SARS-associated coronavirus is endemic in Chinese pigs, and it moves back and forth with great ease, we can expect a far worse SARS epidemic when the weather changes. For all we know, the SARS-associated coronavirus could be spreading without visible signs of mortality throughout all the pig herds in China. Now that China seems to be returning to its old program of news censorship, there's no telling what is going on in the pigs in China. China has covered up past epidemics in its pigs.
The most important point I want in this letter is that the leading pig researchers who should be out there warning about the possibility that pigs will be a huge reservoir for the SARS-associated coronavirus, are by and large so much in bed with the pork industry that they dare not make an independent peep. They live in fear of the industry that finances them. A SARS connection to pigs would create an unprecedented international problem with almost apolcalyptic financial implications.
The pig researchers I spoke with early on in the SARS epidemic almost universally hostile to any discussion of pigs as a source of SARS. If the medical community in Totonto wants to find out the truth about pigs and SARS, it may have to finance research independent of the pig research estalishment.
It is laughable that some in the pig research community have talked about their ability to help research the SARS epidemic with their knowledge of coronaviruses, but have refused to discuss pigs as a possible or probable source of the SARS epidemic.
The truth about the health of pigs in every province in China matters a great deal to you, the nurses and doctors of Toronto. To avoid another hellish round of SARS, I hope you will join me in demanding that the connection between SARS and pigs be investigated with integrity and diligence. Millions of lives may depend on this politically sensitive research.
Charles Ortleb
rubiconmedia@yahoo.com
WE ARE REPRINTING AN OPEN LETTER THAT
WAS PUBLISHED IN THIS SPACE IN JUNE
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE DOCTORS AND NURSES IN TORONTO
Dear Doctors and Nurses of Toronto,
You have just been through Hell.
I've been following your story since the begining of the SARS epidemic.
Some of you have seen friends and colleagues suffer. Some of you have seen patients die. Some of you have been had the illness and recovered. Some of you have gotten the illness and feel like you will never be back to normal. Some of you fear that your illness will relapse and you'll have to go through it all again. All of you have been traumatized and your work conditions have been trying, to say the least. Many of you do not feel adequately compensated for what you have been through.
None of you want to see this happen again. Many of you must be on edge about statements that SARS could be seasonal and that come this autumn or winter, you might all have to go through a similar or worse crisis. You worry about your families and you worry about your future in the medical field. Is it possible you could end up spending the rest of your lives working in space suits to protect yourself from a SARS infection?
Most of you assume that the best minds in the medical field are working hard to understand SARS and that nobody is playing games or putting any financial agenda ahead of the goal of ending SARS as a health threat.
Since the beginning of the SARS epidemic I have been suggesting that pigs should be looked at closely as the possible source of SARS. For over a decade I have been writing about the respiratory diseases in pigs and when I first heard that SARS had broken out in a part of China which has a lot of sick pigs, I began writing about a possible link betwen SARS and a wide array of respiratory pathogens in pigs which include porcine coronavirus.
The World Health Organization has frequently spoken out about the need to identify the animal reservoir from which SARS sprang. Supposedly, the first animals found with SARS-associated coronavirus were civet cats which are sold in exotic animal markets in Guangdong Province in China. Unfortunately, because the virus was first found in civet cats, it was assumed that they must be the primary and only source of the SARS-associated coronavirus. To this very day, publications as prestigious as the Washington Post keep oversimplifying the matter by talking about civet cats as the source of SARS.
The problem is that since the civet cat research, the SARS-associated coronavirus has been found in snakes, bats, and perhaps most importantly, wild pigs. Finding the virus in pigs is most disturbing because 30% of the original cases in Guangdong Province were in foodhandlers. It seems reasonable to hypothesize that such a high a percentage suggests that the foodhandlers were handling pork or chicken rather than civet cats.
A very revealing story about the possible SARS connection to pigs appeared in the Baltimore Sun on May 14th. Gady A. Epstein, of the Baltimore Sun Foreign Staff, wrote a fascinating story about a farmer in the Chinese area where SARS is thought to have originated. Epstein found a farm where what sounds like SARS-like epidemic in pigs may have occurred. Epstein interviewed a woman named Zheng Haocai who lives with her husband on a farm south of Guangzhou. Her shack of a farmhouse is "cobbled together out of aluminum, lumber, tarpaper and plastic sheeting." According to Epstein, "Zheng is unable to afford feed for her pigs, so they eat factory and restaurant garbage, served out of blue plastic barrels of unidentifiable dark sludge that she buys for $2.50 a barrel."
In what could turn out to be the most important reporting on SARS to date, Epstein writes that "at feeding time, her chickens join the feast, pecking near the porkers and, in the end stall, among a handful of pigs set apart from the others. This small group, Zheng said, had recovered from a strange virus that struck dozens of her pigs with flu and diarrhea a few months ago." And Epstein reports that the woman said, "This year we've had a lot of pigs get sick, and even when I give them medicine, they don't get better."
Epstein also reported that "a few feet from the pen lies an open box filled with empty syringes, used medicine bottles and torn packets of fever remedies that Zheng used with little success. Out of a group of 80 pigs she bought this year, she said, half died." Epstein reported that the woman said, "They got fever and didn't want to eat."
Every doctor and nurse in Toronto and the rest of the world has an investment in knowing whether the pigs in Guangdong Province are infected with the SARS-associated coronavirus. There is no indication that the CDC or the World Health Organization is in any hurry to thoroughly investigate the matter.
According to the High Plains Journal, a study was conducted by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency into whether young pigs in Canada could transmit the virus. The study is shoddy to say the least. According to the study, there was some replication by the SARS-associated coronavirus but the pigs didn't get sick and didn't seem to spread the virus. Some replication? Despite it's claims that pigs are not involved, the study doesn't prove that pigs of a wide variety of ages and health conditions in China aren't carriers of the SARS-associated coronavirus. If anything, the fact that pigs can be transiently infected seems to call for more research, not stonewalling.
One thing that caught my eye early in my own SARS investigation was a study of pigs done in Japan. The research on several hundred pigs in Japan suggested that coronaviruses move back and forth with great ease between people and pigs. If the SARS-associated coronavirus is endemic in Chinese pigs, and it moves back and forth with great ease, we can expect a far worse SARS epidemic when the weather changes. For all we know, the SARS-associated coronavirus could be spreading without visible signs of mortality throughout all the pig herds in China. Now that China seems to be returning to its old program of news censorship, there's no telling what is going on in the pigs in China. China has covered up past epidemics in its pigs.
The most important point I want in this letter is that the leading pig researchers who should be out there warning about the possibility that pigs will be a huge reservoir for the SARS-associated coronavirus, are by and large so much in bed with the pork industry that they dare not make an independent peep. They live in fear of the industry that finances them. A SARS connection to pigs would create an unprecedented international problem with almost apolcalyptic financial implications.
The pig researchers I spoke with early on in the SARS epidemic almost universally hostile to any discussion of pigs as a source of SARS. If the medical community in Totonto wants to find out the truth about pigs and SARS, it may have to finance research independent of the pig research estalishment.
It is laughable that some in the pig research community have talked about their ability to help research the SARS epidemic with their knowledge of coronaviruses, but have refused to discuss pigs as a possible or probable source of the SARS epidemic.
The truth about the health of pigs in every province in China matters a great deal to you, the nurses and doctors of Toronto. To avoid another hellish round of SARS, I hope you will join me in demanding that the connection between SARS and pigs be investigated with integrity and diligence. Millions of lives may depend on this politically sensitive research.
Charles Ortleb
rubiconmedia@yahoo.com
