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Scientists are still divided about whether or not there is an avian flu pandemic in our future. Computer models predict a rapid spread akin to the 1918 pandemic that killed millions of people worldwide, but that’s only IF the virus mutates so that it becomes transmittable from human to human and IF researchers cannot invent a vaccine to protect against it or develop new medicines to treat it in time. Also, doctors don’t know if it will affect only weak, elderly and immune-compromised individuals?or everyone.
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Physicians have been worried that there will not be enough star anise available to create the Tamiflu drug needed if there is a bird flu epidemic. Now chemists have discovered an alternative medicine, from the sweetgum tree, which is widely grown throughout the US.
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Bird flu expert Robert G. Webster is attempting to answer the question we’re all asking: Will bird flu change from being a dangerous disease of birds (and the people who care for them) to being a disease that humans pass from one to another?

Webster, who works at the St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, is the scientist who discovered the link between human flu and bird flu (H5N1), which is now only present in birds. At the moment, it can be transmitted to humans only through the droppings of infected birds, which is the reason that Asian children and women have been contracting the disease, since they live in countries where it is traditionally their job to take care of the family?s poultry.
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Bird flu started in the huge bird markets in Asia, where chickens and ducks are sold. Poultry farms in the US are safer because of they way these businesses are run in the US: one company controls an entire farm?from egg production to chickens.

US Poultry expert Todd Applegate says, “The poultry industry is the most vertically integrated of all of our livestock industries. As we try to reduce the risk of bird flu in this country, having full control over the entire production process is probably a good thing.”
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