Friday, May. 01, 2009
2. Don't Be Afraid to Eat Pork
On April 29, the CDC announced that swine flu would no longer be referred to as swine flu, but as the "2009 H1N1 flu." It's less catchy, but more accurate. For one thing, there is no evidence that this virus makes pigs really sick. And the H1N1 virus actually contains genes from swine, avian and human flus. The virus also cannot be spread through pork products — you can't contract swine flu by eating bacon, hot dogs or anything else that was once a pig. Nor will culling pigs, as authorities did in Egypt, do anything to stem the spread of the disease. H1N1 has jumped to humans and is passing easily from person to person, so it's now a human flu that needs to be controlled in us, not the pigs.