Bird Flu & Pandemic Preparation: Full-text online book discusses protecting your family & preventing future outbreaks

Author Michael Greger, M.D. provides the full text of his book "Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching" online. Read the full version for free and access more than 3,000 references cited in the book by following this link.

Leading public health authorities predict that a pandemic triggered by bird flu is inevitable and expected to lead to millions of deaths worldwide. What transformed the influenza virus, that has existed for millions of years in an innocuous form, into a killer?

Dr. Michael Greger traces the human role in the evolution of this virus, what you can do to protect your family in the event of an outbreak and what we as a society should be doing to reduce the likelihood of such devastating diseases occurring in the future.

From the introduction:

The increase in chicken outbreaks has gone hand-in-hand with increased transmission to humans. A decade ago, human infection with bird flu was essentially unheard of. Since H5N1 emerged in 1997, though, chicken viruses H9N2 infected children in China in 1999 and 2003, H7N2 infected residents of New York and Virginia in 2002 and 2003, H7N7 infected people in the Netherlands in 2003, and H7N3 infected poultry workers in Canada in 2004 and a British farmer in 2006. The bird flu virus in the Netherlands outbreak infected more than a thousand people. What has changed in recent years that could account for this disturbing trend?

All bird flu viruses seem to start out harmless to both birds and people. In its natural state, the influenza virus has existed for millions of years as an innocuous, intestinal, waterborne infection of aquatic birds such as ducks. If the true home of influenza viruses is the gut of wild waterfowl, the human lung is a long way from home. How does a waterfowl’s intestinal bug end up in a human cough? Free-ranging flocks and wild birds have been blamed for the recent emergence of H5N1, but people have kept chickens in their backyards for thousands of years, and birds have been migrating for millions.

In a sense, pandemics aren’t born—they’re made. H5N1 may be a virus of our own hatching coming home to roost.

... Along with human culpability, though, comes hope. If changes in human behavior can cause new plagues, changes in human behavior may prevent them in the future.