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 enlarge | Author: Michael Greger
Publisher: Lantern Books
Category: Book
New (21) Used (6) from $15.52
Avg. Customer Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 523373
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 465
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 5.9 x 1.4
ISBN: 1590560981
Dewey Decimal Number: 636.50896203
EAN: 9781590560983
Publication Date: November 15, 2006
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| Customer Reviews:
 Considering Bird Flu January 19, 2007
"As long as there is poultry, there will be pandemics." Bird Flu, p. 346
Bird Flu, by Dr. Michael Greger, of The Humane Society of the United States, provides a comprehensive look at the conditions responsible for the spread and mutations of highly pathogenic avian influenza. His detailed account is summarized by Professor Emeritus Kennedy Shortridge, a molecular biologist at the University of Hong Kong who is credited with having first discovered the deadly H5N1 virus in Asia. Shortridge writes in the Forward:
"It is the siting of large-scale chicken production units, particularly in southern China where avian influenza viruses abound, that is the crux of the problem. There, domestic ducks have been raised on rivers, waterways, and, more recently, with the flooded rice crops cultivated each year. The importation of industrial poultry farming into that same region introduced millions of chickens - highly stressed due to intensive production practices and unsanitary conditions - into this avian influenza milieu. The result? An influenza accident waiting to happen. The H5N1 virus signaled its appearance in Hong Kong in 1997, and has since made its way into dozens of countries, infected millions of birds, and threatens to trigger a human catastrophe."
Greger's story of bird flu is about how human activities and attitudes are generating filth, sickness, and bizarre biological reactions, perhaps to an unprecedented degree, from the gene to the global scene. Whatever may happen to humans as a result of our mischief, for the birds the catastrophe has arrived. Evidence suggests that the chicken is not a natural host for influenza. Reading this, I'm reminded of how Salmonella enteritidis, a strain of intestinal bacteria that can pass from chickens to consumers and handlers of poultry and egg products, migrated in battery-caged hens in the 20th century from their intestines to their ovaries to become part of the very formation of their eggs. Our horrible treatment of chickens shows a malaise in people of which bird flu is a manifestation. I'd call it an epiphany of evil if grand phrases didn't cheapen the facts.
Greger rightfully indicts factory farming, cockfighting, and live bird markets and shows how these trades are interconnected at local, regional, national and transnational levels. He shows how governments protect these trades while talking trash about protecting public health. He shows how the poultry industry conceals sick birds so people won't know they're "buying infected meat and eggs" (p. 350). He describes the "Tysonization" of Thailand and the rest of Asia, where traditional farming practices (without any help from Tyson, of which Asia has its own versions) include this technique:
Pig-hen-fish aquaculture involves perching battery cages of chickens directly over feeding troughs in pig pens which in turn are positioned above fish ponds. The pigs eat the bird droppings and then defecate into the ponds. Depending on the species of fish, the pig excrement is then eaten directly by the fish or acts as fertilizer for aquatic plant fish food. (pp. 138-139)
This method of feeding excrement to farmed animals is a metaphor for how farmed animals around the world really are fed and how much of the world's plant agriculture is fertilized. Farmed animals are fed each others' infected body parts and manure. Farmed animal feed is a dumping ground for farmed animal "waste." Egg-laying hens are fed "spent hen meal." In a report last year on the poultry industry's leading role in promoting bird flu, the agribusiness watchdog group GRAIN noted that a standard ingredient in industrial chicken feed and most industrial animal feed is poultry litter, "a euphemism for whatever is found on the floor of the factory farms: fecal matter, feathers, bedding, etc." ("Fowl play," Feb. 2006, p. 13).
While Bird Flu is replete with information, expert opinions, dire predictions, and pages on how to protect oneself from the flu or lessen its effect, it does not go the distance. Declarations like "extreme remedies are most appropriate for extreme diseases" (Hippocrates) and "The single biggest threat to man's continued dominance on the planet is a virus" (Joshua Lederberg, Nobel laureate) do not lead clearly to a vegetarian solution or even a chicken-free solution. Top-heavy with the problem, the proposed remedy totters beneath.
A nod is given to the fact that people can live well, even better, without animal products by eating wholesome vegan food, but this "extreme remedy appropriate" for extreme diseases, is barely on the table (p. 344). Bird Flu assumes most people will eat animals even if it kills them and their families and spawns a pandemic. The more "practical" remedy is somehow to get rid of or scale back "factory farming," so that an increasingly urban global population can continue to eat birds and other animals made dead, as it were, in little garden plots sprinkled around the earth.
If a vegetarian solution seems "unrealistic," a significant shift away from industrial animal production practices to supply billions of omnivores seems even less likely. Here and there in the book, experts are quoted to the effect that increased consumption and demand for animal products around the world has led to factory-farming. But Bird Flu skirts the implications. I complained about it when asked to review the manuscript last summer. And for the record, chickens bred for the egg industry are not "scrawny," as depicted on page 197. These birds have lithe, handsome, well-proportioned bodies - unless they're being abused, of course. I pointed this out, but there it is in the book, alas. -
Review by Karen Davis, PhD
President of United Poultry Concerns
Dedicated to the compassionate and respectful treatment of chickens and other domestic fowl. www.upc-online.org
Pandemic in waiting?? December 9, 2006
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
H5N1. Pandemic or fizzle? Will this version of Avian Flu be a killer as bad as the great Pandemic Flu of 1918 (also an avian flu)? Or worse? Or a fizzle like Swine Flu in President Gerald Ford's administration? If it is akin to the first two choices, Americans will be faced with one of the worst health threats in its history.
Michael Greger's book, "Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching," explores H5N1 (the current strain of the virus that has generated so much concern)--from its origins, to its transmission, to its potential lethality, to how we might work to minimize the death and destruction that a pandemic might cause.
He begins by discussing the 1918 pandemic (sometimes referred to as Spanish Flu), from its origins as a relatively mild flu bug to its emergence as a mass killer. This serves as a starting point for considering H5N1. It also allows him to discuss the origins of a number of major diseases. One thing to note: influenza in its various forms began as a bird flu.
A couple basic statistics to orient one. The 1918 pandemic killed about 5% of those exposed to the virus (in an interesting tidbit, Greger notes that we have rediscovered the 1918 virus and, through modern genetic technology, have supplies of it in labs. It is also sobering to note that when the rediscovered 1918 bug was injected into mice, most were dead in a short period of time. So we have a very lethal strain from 1918 to study). Thus far, of the 200+ known victims of H5N1, almost 50% have died. If the H5N1 strain does not lose its killing power (and it may, since some lethal strains become less lethal with time), this suggests a destructive potential that is almost unimaginable.
And, if the author is correct, humans have done this to themselves. Mass chicken farms are havens for the rapid spread of H5N1. Also, the virus has been shown to infect pigs. This is bad news, since pigs can also be infected by human viruses. If bird flu and a human virus interact, pigs might provide the breeding ground for a lethal strain of H5N1 that can be easily transmitted from pigs to people and then from person to person. One plus at the present is that H5N1 does not pass from one human to another easily.
What to do about the threat? First, address how chickens and other commercial birds are raised. The vast farms where they are now raised are seedbeds of mass infection by H5N1. Prevention of the emergence of a virulent virus that can be transmitted from human to human is a priority for the author. He says (page 347): "To reduce the emergence of viruses like H5N1, humanity must shift toward raising poultry in smaller flocks, under less stressful, less crowded, and more hygienic conditions, with outdoor access, no use of human antivirals. . . ." Next, work hard to develop vaccines against the virus. This may be difficult, given that we are not sure of what form the virus will take and the slowness of development of a new vaccine. Third, try to develop larger stockpiles of Tamiflu. If the author is correct, the United States is stunningly slow in this effort. Fourth, as bland as it sounds, wash hands regularly! Engage in some degree of "social distancing," not being around large gatherings of people if the flu strikes. Fifth, prepare at home. Stow away nonperishable items in the event that one must try to ride things out. Several weeks of food and water would be needed. The chapter provides a useful check list of items to store in the event of pandemic.
In the final analysis, this is a sobering book. To the extent that the author's analysis is correct, we ought to be taking action now. Certainly, communities ought to be planning for what happens if the pandemic actually occurs. The same with health care organizations. If 30-40% of workers are ill, there will be a breakdown in services all over, and there has to be some planning for such an eventuality. This book probably should be widely read. While, sometimes, I suspect that it might be a little on the "over the top," pessimistic side, I also believe that we can't just sit back and say, "It'll be a fizzle and I don't need to worry." "Don't worry, be happy" is not good preparation for what could be a deadly pandemic.
He takes a health issue and rightly remakes it into a referendum on eating meat December 9, 2006
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Michael Greger's Bird Flu is a triumph of research and analysis. I have been watching this man for over a decade now and have always been in awe not only his writing ability but also his thorough attention to sources. When he says something, you know he can back it up. This book has, I understand, some 4,000 source-citations!
This book marks another important chapter in the struggle of vegans to begin to own issues claimed in other ways. Bird flu is a "health" issue, sure; but it's really a "vegan" issue. The disease is the terrifying product of the domestication of poultry. There's no way around this fact. In a vegan world there would be no H5N1 or any other kind of flu for that matter. This fact is rarely brought out in the mainstream media.
Next, we need a book about manure: not as an agricultural issue or an environmental issue, but a vegan issue. In a vegan world, we would not have nearly the amount of poisonous eutropification in our waterways. The list could go on and on.
Very Well Researched Amazing Book November 24, 2006
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
Much of what is said in this book could be blown off as hype if you are one who trusts mainstream news sources. Dr Greger must be aware of this, as he cites every single source that his information comes from with painstaking detail. The final 1/3 of this book contains all of the references, mainly from scientists and government who probably have some idea of what they are talking about.
Ominously, I received a guide from the government on how to prepare for a flu pandemic as I read this book. The implications of what could happen to our civilization should the bird flu virus mutate from poultry to humans and then from human to human is quite frightening. Dr Greger shows in this book how that is not only possible but even likely due to the way modern agriculture keeps birds in intensively overcrowded conditions where viruses are free to mutate and become more effective at spreading.
As a spiritual person I believe that the way we have turned food animals into genetically modified Frankenstein creatures who live lives of intense confinement, torture and abuse is asking for karmic retribution. Dr Greger perhaps does not share this belief, but he lays the facts and science of pandemics out in a way that is hard for even the most scientifically-minded atheist to refute. We are on the brink of a apocalyptic catastrophe and what is being done to avert it is next to nothing. I hope this book will wake some people up and maybe we can rethink our values in time to save ourselves from disaster.
This book is fantastic November 22, 2006
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Dr. Greger is an expert whose book deserves to be read by anyone concerned about the potential for a pandemic bird flu outbreak. His recommendations are invaluable, and his argument that factory farming is part of the problem is very persuasive. I can't recommmend this book highly enough.
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