Rationing Eggs and Creating Monsters

My favorite grocery store in Texas, HEB, has started rationing eggs due to the shortage caused by the avian flu that is decimating chicken farms throughout the country.  Since eggs are in short supply and a perishable commodity, this only makes sense and, like everything else that HEB does, it is smart, simple and quality conscious. 

But the need for the rationing brings me back to a theme I have addressed before.  The next major health crisis this world faces is not going to be Ebola, or even mislabeled and poorly handled anthrax, it is going to be a mutation of avian flu, and it is going to kill us by the millions.

Poultry industry workers in Asia are routinely given flu shots.  The shots don’t keep them from getting avian flu; they keep them from getting the basic, human influenza.  Why?  Because doctors and scientists want to make sure that there is no way for the deadly avian flu to mutate into human influenza because human flu, while not so deadly as avian, is airborne—easy to transmit.  Avian flu, while extremely lethal to humans, can only be passed from its avian host to victim through physical contact and is rare in humans. 

We know what flu pandemics can do.  The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 killed 50 million people world wide and that was only 2% of infected patients.  By contrast, on the rare occasions when avian flu passes to humans, it kills 50% of them.  Dr. Donald A. Henderson, one of the leaders in the eradication of smallpox, describes H5N1 as the ultimate organism for the destruction of humans on this planet.  Sadly, there are some people who don’t think that sounds like a bad idea.

We know that the H5N1 virus (avian flu) has been transmuted in a lab to airborne form.  The deadliest flu on the planet has been changed, by scientists, to a form that can be spread through any school, airport or office by a good, hearty sneeze.  While the research that created this Frankenstein was done at the Erasmus Medical Research Lab in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, it was paid for by the Dutch government and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.  Some experts in bioweapons say such research should never have been done.  Others say that this research could lead to eradicating the disease or finding a vaccine to cure to prevent it.  Still others point out that it would make a very poor weapon because it attacks both friend and foe alike. 

Here in lies the real danger.  There are some crazy people out there who think this world would be better off without humans.  They hate themselves so much that they transfer that hate to the whole human race.  We just need one, “Occupy Wall Street,” nut, or one PETA fanatic, or one anarchist with annihilation on his mind, or one ISIS martyr with a yen for 72 virgins and things get very bad, very quickly. 

I am a firm believer in the positive power of cutting edge scientific research.  I believe that there is such a thing as knowledge for the sake of knowledge and all of this should be encouraged, but deliberately setting out to create a delivery system for a disease that kills 50% of all humans who contract it is irresponsible.  Assuming that it can be kept secret is naïve.  Hoping that it won’t be used, once leaked, is living in a fantasy.  The fact that I paid for this, on foreign soil, with no guarantees of what happens next, is galling.  We have met the enemy and he is us. 

Pray for sanity, and keep the faith.