I found an interesting and informative article about the Swine Flu on a site called Dr. Mercola dot com where I simply typed in Swine Flu.
Even though it doesn't really answer my question about human to animal infection you all should check it out. It's a more sober take on the swine flu rather that the fear mongering and misinformation that has been prevalent over the past couple of weeks.
I'll admit I don't know much about him but at least he is a doctor and you can easily find his qualifications (I looked him up) which helps with his credibility. Usually people who have nothing to hide, hide nothing. And I like the logical take he has on all of this.
He explains that this is not the first Swine Flu panic:
" My guess is that you can expect to see a lot of panic over this issue in the near future. But the key is to remain calm -- this isn't the first time the public has been warned about swine flu. The last time was in 1976, right before I entered medical school and I remember it very clearly. It resulted in the massive swine flu vaccine campaign.
Do you happen to recall the result of this massive campaign?
Within a few months, claims totaling $1.3 billion had been filed by victims who had suffered paralysis from the vaccine. The vaccine was also blamed for 25 deaths.
However, several hundred people developed crippling Guillain-Barré Syndrome after they were injected with the swine flu vaccine. Even healthy 20-year-olds ended up as paraplegics.
And the swine flu pandemic itself? It never materialized."
What is the swine flu :
"Regular swine flu is a contagious respiratory disease, caused by a type-A influenza virus that affects pigs. The current strain, A(H1N1), is a new variation of an H1N1 virus -- which causes seasonal flu outbreaks in humans -- that also contains genetic material of bird and pig versions of the flu."
He says the Swine Flu affects pigs. Of course because animals get sick too. That's not news. Farmers have been farming for ages and if you know any you'll know that their herds of pigs, cows and chickens can get sick but usually it's not an issue because normally these illnesses didn't affect the families that farmed these animals and there are established measures to take if an animal is sick.
But what he just said is that it's the human strain of the flu that they have found to contain avian and swine dna which he goes on to say
"Interestingly enough, this version has never before been seen in neither human nor animal, which I will discuss a bit later.
He states that Factory Farming Maybe Source of Swine Flu
"Another theory as to the cause of Swine Flu might be factory farming. In the United States, pigs travel coast to coast. They can be bred in North Carolina, fattened in the corn belt of Iowa, and slaughtered in California.
While this may reduce short-term costs for the pork industry, the highly contagious nature of diseases like influenza (perhaps made further infectious by the stresses of transport) needs to be considered when calculating the true cost of long-distance live animal transport.
The majority of U.S. pig farms now confine more than 5,000 animals each. With a group of 5,000 animals, if a novel virus shows up it will have more opportunity to replicate and potentially spread than in a group of 100 pigs on a small farm.
With massive concentrations of farm animals within which to mutate, these new swine flu viruses in North America seem to be on an evolutionary fast track, jumping and reassorting between species at an unprecedented rate."
He also explains why he thinks a true Bird or Swine Flu pandemic is HIGHLY unlikely and his ideas as to where this mysterious new animal-human flu strain came from.
"Alongside the fear-mongering headlines, I've also seen increasing numbers of reports questioning the true nature of this virus. And rightfully so.
Could a mixed animal-human mutant like this occur naturally? And if not, who made it, and how was it released?
Not one to dabble too deep in conspiracy theories, I don't have to strain very hard to find actual facts to support the notion that this may not be a natural mutation, and that those who stand to gain have the wherewithal to pull off such a stunt.
Just last month I reported on the story that the American pharmaceutical company Baxter was under investigation for distributing the deadly avian flu virus to 18 different countries as part of a seasonal flu vaccine shipment. Czech reporters were probing to see if it may have been part of a deliberate attempt to start a pandemic; as such a "mistake" would be virtually impossible under the security protocols of that virus.
The H5N1 virus on its own is not very airborne. However, when combined with seasonal flu viruses, which are more easily spread, the effect could be a potent, airborne, deadly, biological weapon. If this batch of live bird flu and seasonal flu viruses had reached the public, it could have resulted in dire consequences.
There is a name for this mixing of viruses; it's called "reassortment," and it is one of two ways pandemic viruses are created in the lab. Some scientists say the most recent global outbreak -- the 1977 Russian flu -- was started by a virus created and leaked from a laboratory.
Another example of the less sterling integrity of Big Pharma is the case of Bayer, who sold millions of dollars worth of an injectable blood-clotting medicine to Asian, Latin American, and some European countries in the mid-1980s, even though they knew it was tainted with the AIDS virus.
So while it is morally unthinkable that a drug company would knowingly contaminate flu vaccines with a deadly flu virus such as the bird- or swine flu, it is certainly not impossible. It has already happened more than once.
But there seems to be no repercussions or hard feelings when industry oversteps the boundaries of morality and integrity and enters the arena of obscenity. Because, lo and behold, which company has been chosen to head up efforts, along with WHO, to produce a vaccine against the Mexican swine flu?
Baxter!11 Despite the fact that ink has barely dried on the investigative reports from their should-be-criminal "mistake" against humanity.
According to other sources,12 a top scientist for the United Nations, who has examined the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Africa, as well as HIV/AIDS victims, has concluded that the current swine flu virus possesses certain transmission "vectors" that suggest the new strain has been genetically-manufactured as a military biological warfare weapon.
The UN expert believes that Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and the current A-H1N1 swine flu virus are biological warfare agents.
In addition, Army criminal investigators are looking into the possibility that disease samples are missing from biolabs at Fort Detrick -- the same Army research lab from which the 2001 anthrax strain was released, according to a recent article in the Fredrick News Post.13 In February, the top biodefense lab halted all its research into Ebola, anthrax, plague, and other diseases known as "select agents," after they discovered virus samples that weren't listed in its inventory and might have been switched with something else.
Pretty interesting! Not sure what I think about it but it's interesting and it does make some sense. More sense than some of what I've been hearing in the news and what's being put out there.
There is a ton more info in his article and although you can say that he kinda minimizes the issue, he does give some pretty sound advice and he tries to explain himself which I find refreshing. I guess it kinda balances everything out a bit.
. The hybrid has the opportunity
