The politics of swine flu’s origin
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
June 25, 2009 by fluoutbreak
A story in yesterday’s New York Times was headlined: In New Theory, Swine Flu Started in Asia, Not Mexico. That sounded pretty interesting. What’s the new evidence? The answer? None. Just speculation. So what’s going on?
Contrary to the popular assumption that the new swine flu pandemic arose on factory farms in Mexico, federal agriculture officials now believe that it most likely emerged in pigs in Asia, but then traveled to North America in a human.
But they emphasized that there was no way to prove their theory and only sketchy data underpinning it.
There is no evidence that this new virus, which combines Eurasian and North American genes, has ever circulated in North American pigs, while there is tantalizing evidence that a closely related “sister virus” has circulated in Asia.
American breeding pigs, possibly carrying North American swine flu, are frequently exported to Asia, where the flu could have combined with Asian strains. But because of disease quarantines that make it hard to import Asian pigs, experts said, it is unlikely that a pig brought the new strain back West.
“The most likely scenario is that it came over in the mammalian species that moves most freely around the world,” said Dr. Amy L. Vincent, a swine flu specialist at the Agriculture Department’s laboratory in Ames, Iowa, referring, of course, to people. (Don McNeil, New York Times)
Loading ...
