Over the weekend, we’ve had an interesting debate forming about the H5N1 avian flu story. The debate over whether to treat the hype about H5N1 seriously doesn’t seem to break down strictly along party lines – yet.
As I first mentioned last night, however, I have noticed a perplexing dedication among Christian fundamentalists to promoting the idea that a deadly avian flu is poised to make a merciless sweep across the United States. Perhaps their dedication has to do with providing political cover for George W. Bush. Perhaps the H5N1 obsession among right wing evangelicals has to do with the strange hope that the plagues of the End Times apocalypse are almost upon us – first we get sick, and then Jesus returns.
Whatever the motivation, it’s amusing to see the rhetorical contortions that Creationists get into when discussing the bird flu story. Last night, I mentioned how the Christian Broadcasting News is republishing a story from the Associated Press about the way that H5N1 may mutate into a new strain – in other words, about the fact that the current bird flu being discussed could only become a pandemic if it evolved the ability to pass more easily from human to human.
Without such evolution, the H5N1 bird flu story has no wings – so to speak. Right now, it’s only people who work closely with birds and their families who seem to have cause to worry about the bird flu. So, when the Creationists try to get the fear factor going, they have to step lightly, and play around a little bit with the facts.
For testimony in this case, I’ll call upon an article written by Pat Robertson’s people at the Christian Broadcasting Network especially for the CBN TV show The 700 Club. In this article, a biography of Dr. Mitchell L. Gaynor, the 700 Club audience is warned to brace itself for the bird flu. But why?
Well, according to this article, bird flu is already in the United States! Well, of course, that’s true. New strains of flu virus that are transmitted from birds to humans come into the United States quite often. Almost all of these strains of flu aren’t much to worry about, though. It was way back in 1918 that the last big deadly bird flu hit the USA. That one died off long ago. Right now, there isn’t any deadly bird flu in the United States.
You wouldn’t think that from reading the 700 Club article, which speaks of, “increasing rates of human diseases and epidemics such as ‘bird’ flu. The avian ‘bird’ flu came to the U.S. after severe outbreaks in Asia. Bird flu was discovered in 2003 on a Texas chicken farm. The virus was spread by contact with chickens to humans. Symptoms of bird flu include the following: fever, sore throat, muscle aches, headache, lethargy, conjunctivitis (eye infections), breathing problems, and chest pains. Dr. Gaynor says what people fear most with this epidemic is human-to-human transmission, which has not yet occurred.”
What this article doesn’t mention is that the bird flu that’s already in the United States isn’t greatly feared – even if human-to-human transmission were to take place. That’s because it’s the H5N1 bird flu virus that’s most deadly – and it’s only in Eurasia right now, not much of a threat to the United States.
Then there’s the issue of human-to-human transmission, which has occurred, but is extremely rare, with the H5N1 bird flu virus. The 700 Club article doesn’t mention why human-to-human transmission is so rare with the H5N1 virus in Eurasia, and doesn’t happen with some strains of bird flu now in the United States.
The fact that the 700 Club article is struggling not to mention is that it takes evolution for a virus that is not easily transmissible from human to human to gain the ability to spread easily among humankind. Viruses don’t have minds, you see, so they can’t just come up with the idea to spread from human to human even though they’ve never done so before. They don’t come up with plans to invade new species. The only way that a virus can gain the ability to move quickly from organism to organism within a species it hasn’t touched before is for it to change the genetic code of instructions that dictates how it behaves after invading a host cell. That’s evolution, and that’s what the 700 Club doesn’t want to tell its audience.
What the 700 Club audience suggests is that there is only one bird flu out there, and that when people talk about the bird flu threat, the threat from bird flu already existing in the United States is the same as bird flu in Eurasia. Of course, this description completely ignores the existence of large numbers of different strains of bird flu. Really, what different strains of bird flu have in common is that birds are their most common carriers. So, pretending that there is only one bird flu is like pretending that everything that lives in trees is the same thing – so that monkeys, squirrels, racoons, owls, and gypsy moth caterpillars would all just be referred to as tree animals. That’s the big biological mistake that the 700 Club makes when it lumps H5N1 bird flu in with the other strains of bird flu already in the United States.
Of course, it’s difficult to cover health and science news when your theological taskmasters require you to deny the reality of biological evolution. So, I at least have to give the people at the 700 Club points for creative writing. But, you know, when it comes to getting information about science and public policy, it may not be the best idea to go to the creative writing community. Instead, I suggest a more post-medieval approach to the truth: Consider getting your information from professionals who don’t require all pieces of information to conform to the ideas of a book 2,000 years old.
Postscript: This morning, my favorite bird flu bumper sticker reads, The bird flu crisis is as real as the Social Security crisis.
