10 things you didn't know about bird flu Dr Michael Greger 4th
February, 2009 A dose of flu in winter is as inevitable as a
broken boiler – and usually as harmless. But as public health
expert Dr Michael Greger explains, intensive farming of animals
around the globe may mean we are hatching out an influenza
timebomb 1 Their bugs are worse than their bite The biblical
concept of ‘dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds
of heaven; and every living thing that moved upon the earth’ has
populated a veritable Pandora’s Box full of humankind’s greatest
killers. Scourges such as smallpox and measles, which have
claimed hundreds of millions of lives in recent centuries, were
birthed in the barnyard about 10,000 years ago. Smallpox likely
came from camelpox and measles from the rinderpest virus of
cattle. Before the domestication of ducks, there was likely no
such thing as the human flu or influenza pandemics. Domesticated
pigs probably gave us whooping cough, and water buffalo,
leprosy. Horses likely gave