Gripe aviar (Continuación)

By Simon Jenkins (THE GUARDIAN, 24/02/06):

Who says nobody gives credit to ministers where it is due? Let us hear it for Margaret Beckett. She is playing avian flu absolutely right. Invited to panic by a coalition of scaremongers, lobbyists, academics, headline writers and nutcases, Beckett and her junior, Ben Bradshaw, at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are keeping their heads.

No, they are not quarantining something called "the national flock" at the bidding of the tabloids. No, they are not hiring every agri-spiv in the land and paying them millions to cull, jab, immobilise or incarcerate birds.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Magnus Linklater (THE TIMES, 22/02/06):

The goverment’s response to the threat of bird flu in Britain is heart-sinkingly predictable. As soon as the first infected creature is identified, there will be mass slaughter around the site where it is found, and isolation of any threatened premises. All birds within a fixed radius will be eliminated and movement restricted. Vaccination has been all but ruled out — indeed there has been no attempt even to order up the vaccines that other countries, like the Netherlands, are using. If all this sounds depressingly familiar — it is. As last week’s devastating report from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne on the 2001 foot-and-mouth (FMD) outbreak pointed out: “The UK’s approach to combating animal disease has remained broadly the same since the FMD crisis.…  Seguir leyendo »

By Wendy Orent, an Atlanta-based writer and the author of Plague: The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the World's Most Dangerous Disease (THE WASHINGTON POST, 16/10/05):

For two years, a deadly strain of chicken flu known as H5N1 has been killing birds in Asia. While slightly more than 100 people are known to have contracted the disease, and 60 of them have died, there is still no sign that the flu has begun to spread from person to person.

That hasn't prevented a recent outbreak of apocalyptic warnings from health officials and experts about the specter of a worldwide pandemic.…  Seguir leyendo »