As The Bird Flies (and the planet burns)…So Does The Risk of Infectious Disease Grow.

Mike Magee A study eight years ago, published in Nature, was titled “Study revives bird origin for 1918 flu pandemic.” The study, which analyzed more than 80,000 gene sequences from flu viruses from humans., birds, horses, pigs, and bats, concluded the 1918 pandemic disaster “probably sprang from North American domestic and wild birds, not from […]

Covid – “A Mirror for Social Thought and Plausible Action.”

Mike Magee As we enter the third year of the Covid pandemic, with perhaps a partial end in sight, the weight of the debate shows signs of shifting away from genetically engineered therapies, and toward a social science search for historic context. Renowned historian, Charles E. Rosenberg, envisioned a similar transition for the AIDS epidemic […]

Should Bird Flu Research Be Suppressed?

Mike Magee Several years ago, Bird Flu (avian flu, H5N1), was the hottest topic in science reporting. We covered it closely from 2005 to 2009.(1) There were three major threads to our reporting: 1) H5N1 is a deadly virus. Since discovered in 1997, it has killed some 600 people. 2) H5N1 is not as dangerous […]