mylanta
05-10-2006, 01:02 PM
Written by a friend of a friend at U of Minn
Yesterday I wrote a “My Turn” that I sent to Newsweek. Here is the text:
Is There an Ornithologist in the House?
The level of paranoia in the United States has been at fever pitch since
September 11, 2001. Suddenly we’re fearful of Muslims, Mexicans, gays and
lesbians—even those who have been our neighbors for years—while we’re no
closer at all to capturing our real enemy, Osama bin Laden, nor to
stopping al Qaeda. As if to encourage people to forget about them, the
administration and news media are fueling public panic about something
new: bird flu. The last time we overreacted to a possible pandemic, swine
flu in 1976, more people died from a vaccination produced and
overprescribed in panic than from the disease itself. Now, in the past
few weeks, I’ve been getting emails every day asking if people should stop
feeding backyard birds to be safe. The land of the free and the home of
the brave is suddenly petrified of chickadees.
Our nation has had two presidents who were card-carrying members of the
American Ornithologists’ Union, one a Republican, one a Democrat, both
named Roosevelt. The last time an ornithologist was in the White House,
our nation defeated the Nazis and the empire that had attacked us at Pearl
Harbor, both in less than four years. How could an ornithologist
accomplish so much in such a short time?
Franklin Roosevelt must have learned more than simple identification in
his study of birds. Close observation of any cooperative feeding flock of
chickadees, warblers, nuthatches, and little woodpeckers teaches us how
birds can supply all their own needs independently while insuring domestic
tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general
welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty to themselves and their
posterity in a manner that is very much in keeping with the spirit of the
Constitution of the United States. Fearless and yet warm and friendly as a
chickadee himself, FDR led the nation through the Great Depression and the
war by reminding us that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself.
Unlike the current strategy of fear-mongering and color-coded terror
alerts, FDR’s inquisitiveness and intelligence kept us focused on reality,
on facing problems and crises not by panicking but by using our ingenuity
to find solutions.
Unfortunately, the current administration, Congress, and the media are
fostering a culture of cowardice. Bird flu? Apparently they pay no
attention to reality—to the fact that every single case of the disease in
humans so far has been contracted not by contact with wild birds but by
handling diseased poultry. For the first several years after this strain
of H5N1 was discovered, during the time when it could most expeditiously
have been contained, it was spread not along migratory bird flyways but
along human trade routes, presumably the routes by which infected poultry
were shipped here and there. Our first lines of defense against the
disease reaching our shores, had we used our brains instead of reaching
for the panic button, should have been abroad, helping those countries
where the disease originated to develop more sanitary poultry farming
practices, and at home, making sure our own poultry industry is in strict
compliance with the highest sanitation and disease-prevention standards
and making sure our pharmaceutical industry is working on the development
of both a vaccination and of flu medications that are more effective
relief against serious strains of flu. Had a chickadee been in the White
House instead of a chickenhawk, our pharmaceutical industry would have
been pressured to get crackin’ years ago. Instead, the companies
continue raking in billions on botox and erectile dysfunction products
while ignoring the role they should be playing in disease prevention. The
ornithologist who inspired the nation to make sacrifices and work toward
common goals wouldn’t have let industry get away with doing so very little
in this crisis.
Rather than consulting with authorities on disease transmission and
epidemiology before expounding on the issue, President Bush’s first speech
about bird flu focused on calling out the military to enforce
quarantines, again at a time when human-to-human transmission is not even
a characteristic of this strain. Right now more money is being spent
killing and testing wild birds, none of which have been infected in
America so far and none anywhere which have been implicated in human
deaths, than on scrutinizing our poultry industry and developing
vaccinations and effective treatments. This might make sense if even a
single one of the hundreds of human cases had been transmitted by a wild
bird, or if there was any evidence whatsoever that a wild bird had first
given the disease to poultry. But so far all the facts point to the
precise opposite—the wild birds that have so far been infected with this
deadly strain almost certainly got it from diseased poultry and runoff or
waste products from infected farms.
Once again birds are serving as canaries in the coal mine, their deaths a
powerful warning of an invisible threat to us humans. But without an
ornithologist at the helm, or at least someone with the curiosity,
intelligence, and focus of a chickadee, right now rather than looking for
an intelligent solution to stop this invisible killer dead in its tracks,
we’re killing the canaries.
Laura Erickson
Yesterday I wrote a “My Turn” that I sent to Newsweek. Here is the text:
Is There an Ornithologist in the House?
The level of paranoia in the United States has been at fever pitch since
September 11, 2001. Suddenly we’re fearful of Muslims, Mexicans, gays and
lesbians—even those who have been our neighbors for years—while we’re no
closer at all to capturing our real enemy, Osama bin Laden, nor to
stopping al Qaeda. As if to encourage people to forget about them, the
administration and news media are fueling public panic about something
new: bird flu. The last time we overreacted to a possible pandemic, swine
flu in 1976, more people died from a vaccination produced and
overprescribed in panic than from the disease itself. Now, in the past
few weeks, I’ve been getting emails every day asking if people should stop
feeding backyard birds to be safe. The land of the free and the home of
the brave is suddenly petrified of chickadees.
Our nation has had two presidents who were card-carrying members of the
American Ornithologists’ Union, one a Republican, one a Democrat, both
named Roosevelt. The last time an ornithologist was in the White House,
our nation defeated the Nazis and the empire that had attacked us at Pearl
Harbor, both in less than four years. How could an ornithologist
accomplish so much in such a short time?
Franklin Roosevelt must have learned more than simple identification in
his study of birds. Close observation of any cooperative feeding flock of
chickadees, warblers, nuthatches, and little woodpeckers teaches us how
birds can supply all their own needs independently while insuring domestic
tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general
welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty to themselves and their
posterity in a manner that is very much in keeping with the spirit of the
Constitution of the United States. Fearless and yet warm and friendly as a
chickadee himself, FDR led the nation through the Great Depression and the
war by reminding us that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself.
Unlike the current strategy of fear-mongering and color-coded terror
alerts, FDR’s inquisitiveness and intelligence kept us focused on reality,
on facing problems and crises not by panicking but by using our ingenuity
to find solutions.
Unfortunately, the current administration, Congress, and the media are
fostering a culture of cowardice. Bird flu? Apparently they pay no
attention to reality—to the fact that every single case of the disease in
humans so far has been contracted not by contact with wild birds but by
handling diseased poultry. For the first several years after this strain
of H5N1 was discovered, during the time when it could most expeditiously
have been contained, it was spread not along migratory bird flyways but
along human trade routes, presumably the routes by which infected poultry
were shipped here and there. Our first lines of defense against the
disease reaching our shores, had we used our brains instead of reaching
for the panic button, should have been abroad, helping those countries
where the disease originated to develop more sanitary poultry farming
practices, and at home, making sure our own poultry industry is in strict
compliance with the highest sanitation and disease-prevention standards
and making sure our pharmaceutical industry is working on the development
of both a vaccination and of flu medications that are more effective
relief against serious strains of flu. Had a chickadee been in the White
House instead of a chickenhawk, our pharmaceutical industry would have
been pressured to get crackin’ years ago. Instead, the companies
continue raking in billions on botox and erectile dysfunction products
while ignoring the role they should be playing in disease prevention. The
ornithologist who inspired the nation to make sacrifices and work toward
common goals wouldn’t have let industry get away with doing so very little
in this crisis.
Rather than consulting with authorities on disease transmission and
epidemiology before expounding on the issue, President Bush’s first speech
about bird flu focused on calling out the military to enforce
quarantines, again at a time when human-to-human transmission is not even
a characteristic of this strain. Right now more money is being spent
killing and testing wild birds, none of which have been infected in
America so far and none anywhere which have been implicated in human
deaths, than on scrutinizing our poultry industry and developing
vaccinations and effective treatments. This might make sense if even a
single one of the hundreds of human cases had been transmitted by a wild
bird, or if there was any evidence whatsoever that a wild bird had first
given the disease to poultry. But so far all the facts point to the
precise opposite—the wild birds that have so far been infected with this
deadly strain almost certainly got it from diseased poultry and runoff or
waste products from infected farms.
Once again birds are serving as canaries in the coal mine, their deaths a
powerful warning of an invisible threat to us humans. But without an
ornithologist at the helm, or at least someone with the curiosity,
intelligence, and focus of a chickadee, right now rather than looking for
an intelligent solution to stop this invisible killer dead in its tracks,
we’re killing the canaries.
Laura Erickson