Product Description

From age-old scourges such as smallpox and tuberculosis to emerging threats like AIDS and SARS, our interactions with animals have always played a pivotal role as a source of human disease. Bird flu is the latest such menace coming home to roost. Leading public health authorities now predict as inevitable a pandemic of influenza, triggered by bird flu and expected to lead to millions of deaths around the globe.

The influenza virus has existed for millions of years as an innocuous intestinal virus of wild ducks. What turned a harmless waterborne duck virus into a killer? In Bird Flu, Dr. Michael Greger traces the human role in the evolution of this virus, whose humble beginnings belie its transformation into a killer mutant strain with the potential to become as ferocious as Ebola and as contagious as the common cold. In the face of the coming pandemic, Dr. Greger reveals what we can do to protect our families and what human society to can do to reduce the likelihood of such catastrophes in the future.

Amid the growing panic surrounding this issue, Dr. Greger takes a sobering look at a deadly cycle and offers a solution to ending it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #92188 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 465 pages

John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America
Greger's work is imbued with deep commitment, discerning intelligence, and life-affirming compassion.

From the Publisher
Here's what people are saying about Bird Flu:

"The book reads like a detective novel, but its value will be equipping readers to protect themselves from the flu.... Bird Flu will be a fine addition to the office library as we continue to plan a national response to a possible avian influenza pandemic." --Dirk Kempthorne, U.S. Secretary of the Interior

"The book is timely, well written, and very comprehensive from any reader's perspective. It also can help people understand the urgency of a possible avian flu pandemic as it now exists, and how it could affect the health and well-being of people everywhere." --Julie Gerberding, MD, Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"[Greger's] contribution to research is commendable." --Colonel George W. Korch, Jr., Commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases

"A brilliant and captivating book, meticulously researched, beautifully and engagingly written with wit and grace, and argued with relentless logic. In addition to providing practical take-home tips for protecting oneself from the flu, the author elegantly demonstrates that the evolution of the devastating influenza virus, as well as that of numerous other zoonotic pathogens, stems directly from the proliferation of confinement agricultural systems. Every person concerned about human and animal health and welfare, self-preservation, and justice should read this book." --Bernard Rollin, PhD, University Distinguished Professor, Colorado State University

"Dr. Greger does an excellent job. His writing is lucid and sensible, and his research complete. Bird Flu is a timely work and will be an excellent resource for scientists and laypersons alike." --Earl Brown, Ph.D., Professor of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology, University of Ottawa

"Michael Greger has taken on the formidable task of reviewing and synthesizing the many factors contingent upon chicken production that have brought us to the influenza threat the world now faces. Drawing upon scientific literature and media reports at large, Dr. Greger explores the hole we have dug for ourselves with our own unsavoury practices.... Michael Greger has achieved much in this volume. He has taken a major step toward balancing humanity's account with animals." --Kennedy F. Shortridge, Ph.D., DSc(Hon), CBiol, FIBiol, Professor Emeritus at the University of Hong Kong

"Michael Greger's work is imbued with deep commitment, discerning intelligence, and life-affirming compassion. His work is a gift to our times." --John Robbins, author of The Food Revolution

About the Author
Michael Greger, MD, is Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at The Humane Society of the United States. As an internationally recognized lecturer on public health issues, he has presented at the Conference on World Affairs, the National Institutes of Health, and the Bird Flu Summit, among countless other symposia and institutions, and was invited as an expert witness in defense of Oprah Winfrey at the infamous "meat defamation" trial. Dr. Greger is a graduate of the Cornell University School of Agriculture and the Tufts University School of Medicine. He is also the author of Carbophobia.

Customer Reviews

A terrifying possibility and sad commentary on our exploitation of animals
Michael Greger's "Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching" is more terrifying than anything a horror writer could imagine, since it depicts a real-life doomsday scenario that seems poised to occur very soon; indeed, the new H5N1 strain of influenza, known as "bird flu," has mutated into a form that can be transmitted by human contact, though not yet on a massive scale, meaning a mass outbreak is more a question of when, not if.

Whereas humans generally contract the disease by ingesting contaminated birds, or being in frequent contact with them, bird flu could blanket the globe when the virus has learned to jump easily from human to human. The author writes: "One day soon, experts fear, with more and more people becoming infected, the virus will finally figure out the combination -- the right combination of mutations to spread not just in one elevator or building, but every building, everywhere, around the globe. One superflu virus. It's happened before, and experts predict it many soon happen again."

Dr. Greger sets the stage for what could come by giving readers a grisly account of a previous avian influenza outbreak: the 1918 flu pandemic, in which 50 to 100 million humans perished. These were gruesome deaths, with blood oozing from eye sockets as the victim's lungs liquefied. Fatalities were so abundant that officials were unable to keep up with burying the corpses. It seems this was merely a sample of what's in store for humanity. "As devastating as the 1918 pandemic was," Dr. Greger writes, "on average the mortality rate was less than 5%. The H5N1 strain of bird flu virus now spreading like a plague across the world currently kills about 50% of its known human victims, on par with some strains of Ebola, making it potentially ten times as deadly as the worst plague in human history." One reason, he explains, is the 1918 virus attacked only the lungs, whereas H5N1 shuts down all the internal organs.

"Bird Flu" eloquently contextualizes the subject, giving us a greater understanding of the virus' origins and our critical role in it. The director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States, Dr. Greger examines bird flu from every angle, creating a meticulously researched work that traces how agricultural, scientific, environmental, political and economic forces have conspired to transform a virus that once threatened only waterfowl into a "highly pathogenic avian influenza" destined to lay waste to large segments of human population.

Among the stops on the author's bird flu reality tour is President George W. Bush's decision in April of 2006 to lift the ban on poultry products from China -- a country well known for its recent outbreaks of avian influenza -- possibly in return for China's agreement to drop its mad cow disease-related ban on U.S. beef imports. (One disease for another, perhaps? No trade deficit there.) Other troubling highlights include the world's inadequate hospital capacity and the inability to create a vaccine, or enough of it, to combat a virus that kills half its victims. In other words, we are as ill-prepared for avian flu today as we were in 1918. And, as Dr. Greger notes, not only is H5N1 worse than what our grandparents faced, but 21st-century transportation means a virus can travel around the planet in 24 hours, not a year.

The book is also a sobering lesson in how many of our human ailments, from the common cold to AIDS, have come from our oppression of animals, especially the practice of breeding and raising them for food. (Dr. Greger notes that human influenza began with the domestication of ducks 4,500 years ago.) Yet authorities refuse to confront the obvious cause of this "virus of our own hatching," preferring instead to devote their resources to containing the outbreak by culling chickens and turkeys and extolling the virtues of well-cooked meat.

Even without the looming pandemic, "Bird Flu" reminds us that eating animal flesh can be deadly. Dr. Greger writes: "For the same reason that people don't get Dutch Elm Disease or ever seem to come down with a really bad case of aphids, food products of animal origin are the source of most cases of food poisoning, with chicken the most common culprit." He notes that although the USDA asserts that proper cooking methods kill all viruses, including bird flu, 76 million Americans still suffer food poisoning every year and an estimated 5,000 die from food-borne illness. The average American kitchen, it seems, has become a biohazard, with pathogenic bacteria found on food-preparation surfaces, sinks and utensils. Dr. Greger quotes flu expert Albert Osterhaus, who concluded that "the gastrointestinal tract of humans is a portal of entry for H5N1."

Although pandemics seem inevitable, Dr. Greger's landmark book suggests an obvious (some might say radical) solution: the elimination of intensive poultry production. Perhaps this is more wishful thinking, given the world's ever-growing appetite for cheap animal protein, but others in the scientific community are also supporting this recommendation, so we may at least see improvements in the way agribusiness operates. "Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching" could herald dramatic changes in farming practices, finally driving decision-makers to critically examine not only how this virus came to be, but how we can curtail it and future diseases lurking within animal factories around the globe.

Mark Hawthorne, author of Striking at the Roots: A Practical Guide to Animal Activism

Essential (and surprisingly entertaining) emergency reading
I didn't want to read this book. Maybe you don't either. But you must. And when you do, you'll find that the author has made it easy, and even entertaining, for you to learn everything you never wanted to know about bird flu.

Michael Greger writes in an engaging and accessible style that will keep you turning pages as he guides you through the history of zoonotic (animal-based) diseases and explains how contemporary factory farming and meat-packing practices not only make the emergence of new diseases more likely but also place consumers at risk of food poisoning by everyday microorganisms like E. Coli and Salmonella. Despite his somber subject matter, Greger is upbeat, giving us the bad news in a way that energizes us to do something about it.

It can happen here. It has happened here. The 1918 influenza pandemic that killed more Americans than World War II was a bird flu. The next pandemic will be too. We all need to know what we might be able to do to prevent or mitigate that pandemic. You need to what to do to protect yourself and your loved ones when the pandemic comes. Read this book now and make sure that the public policy makers who are supposed to be looking out for you read it too.

Superb work on avian flu history and how to plan for a pandemic
Watching a pandemic unfold and take shape before your eyes is like watching paint dry. It is an agonizing process, slow and painful. But at the end, the product is there for all to see.

This is the book to read while watching the paint dry. Like Mike Davis' excellent "The Monster at Our Door," Dr. Greger has done a lot of the heavy lifting for you. He has read countless books, scientific papers, newspaper and magazine articles along with medical/scientific journals and produced the definitive work on avian influenza for the lay reader, decision-maker and concerned citizen.

Along the way, Dr. Greger also shows us the principal underlying cause of the spread of H5N1 (factory farming of chickens and other poultry) and supports his theories with mountains of data, opinion and observation -- much of it directly from the commercial poultry industry he takes to task for putting the world in the shape it is in, bird flu-wise.

Certain passages contain the most relevatory things about food production I have read since Upton Sinclair. It would not take much more to turn me into a vegetarian! I now seek free-range chickens to consume.

Speaking of consume: Once you have read (in order) The Great Influenza (Barry), The Monster at Our Door (Davis) and Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own hatching (Greger), you are ready to dive into the scientific literature yourself. Have a go at all three of these excellent books.