While invariably fatal bovine spongiform encephalopathy ("mad cow" disease) is the most lethal, two other diseases with the potential to infect millions more people have surfaced during recent months.  No sooner was acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Asia brought under control than chickens began dying of the highly virulent H5N1 strain of avian influenza.  As of  this writing 80 million birds have been killed to prevent the disease from spreading.  Many of them were crammed into garbage bags and buried alive.  Also, as of this writing 19 people out of the 25 people infected (14 of them in Viet Nam) have died.

    Thus far, no human to human transmission has been detected.  It appears that all those infected, many of them children, got the disease from contact with poultry or their wastes.  With the horrendous flu epidemic that killed up to 50 million people in 1918-19 ever in mind, authorities in all 10 affected Asian countries are keeping a sharp watch to make sure the virus does not mutate into a form.trans-missible frim hyman to human.

    The disease was diagnosed in an endangered clouded leopard in a Thai zoo, however.  A zoo employee suggested it could have been caused by feeding the animal chicken parts.  It could also have been transmitted by wild birds who carry the disease, however.

    The two outbreaks of a different strain of avian flu in Delaware and New Jersey, identified as HPAI (high pathology avian influenza), substrain H7, have occasioned killing whole flocks there. In an apparently unrelated case, HPAI substrain H5N2 caused the "depopulation" of a flock of over 6,000 chickens in Texas.  Several countries are refusing to import U.S. chickens and eggs.  Neither strain is considered a threat to humans.   

    Cramming a large number animals into a small space affords disease organisms an ideal opportunity to multiply.  When these organisms infect another species, they get the opportunity to mutate and jump to other individuals of that species as happened in the case of the deadly 1918 flu epidemic

    This is another case where measures to alleviate the suffering of animals, in this case by giving them more space, have the potential to benefit humans as well.

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