Health: Is Bird Flu Overhyped?

Anxiety about avian flu is spreading far faster than the disease. Watch enough reports on television about the outbreaks in Turkey, and you could worry yourself sick. In my opinion, the anxiety is unfounded. • At the moment, the H5N1 influenza virus is mainly a threat to birds. The virus can infect and kill other animals but only if they have close contact with infected birds. The big concern is that it will gain the ability to pass easily from person to person, possibly by exchanging genes with an ordinary flu virus in the body of some unlucky person infected with...

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