Image by NIAID, via Flickr
by Alison Despathy
On December 6, 2024, the United States Department of Agriculture, “Issued a Federal Order requiring additional testing for and reporting of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in livestock and milk. This order is in addition to USDA’s April 2024 Federal Order which requires testing of lactating dairy cows before interstate shipment and reporting of any positive results.”
Despite the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) stressing that bird flu poses a low risk to the general public, media reports are on the rise including, ‘likely’ human cases of bird flu from cows ‘presumed to be infected’, a person in Louisiana with underlying health conditions struggling with a severe case of bird flu supposedly acquired from a flock of sick chickens, bird flu confirmed in a recently depopulated, Franklin County Vermont backyard flock, and Governor Newsom’s Declaration of a State of Emergency after 650 herds in California tested positive for bird flu.
It is absolutely urgent Vermont revisit the history and existing body of avian bird flu science. This will help inform Vermont’s policy and procedure for addressing any threat of bird flu while simultaneously protecting our local farmers, their herds, Vermont’s agricultural industry and our food security
According to the CDC, as reported on December 1, bird flu has been confirmed in 891 herds in 16 states. Vermont has decided to take screening a step further or as the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets has explained, a “step above” the USDA Federal Order for monthly regional testing. Instead Vermont will test all Vermont dairy farms individually, about 425 in total.
The intention is to prevent a confusing backtrack situation in order to identify the source if bird flu is detected. According to Vermont’s Agency of Agriculture, this will minimize disruption to Vermont’s farm operations and allow for a swift response. Understanding the compromised testing methods of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and antibody tests involved in this screening operation and ensuring thorough investigations into positive tests and/or sick animals will help protect agriculture in Vermont. Otherwise bad science, not bird flu, holds the potential to decimate Vermont’s farming industry
Don’t Believe the Hype
Marc Siegel is a medical professor, physician and author of the book, False Alarm: The Truth about the Epidemic of Fear. During the 2005 ‘avian bird flu epidemic’, the media raced to outperform competitors claiming threats of the ominous avian bird flu, H5N1. Scientists, the United Nations’ Chief Coordinator of avian bird flu, David Nabarro, U.S. President George W. Bush and Reinhard Kurth, Director of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin Germany all offered highly exaggerated death estimates from bird flu ranging from 150 million to all 6 billion earth inhabitants.
Meanwhile, Maclean’s magazine in Canada published an article, “Forget SARS, West Nile, Ebola, and Avian Flu,- The Real Epidemic is Fear,” in which the author, like Dr. Marc Siegel, exposed the intense fear, false reports and pharmaceutical frenzy generated from media exaggeration and headlines based on a lack of actual evidence and facts.
At this same time, in her 2005 article, “Bitter Pill” published in the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review, Trudy Lieberman detailed the use of the media by the medical industry. Lieberman explained that, “The news media too often seem more interested in hype and hope than in critically appraising new drugs on behalf of the public, and the problem has grown drastically in recent years as direct to consumer advertising has increased, delivering ever higher ad revenues to the nation’s media.”
Big Pharma spent 2 million on marketing in the US in the 1980s, several billions in 2004, a whopping 6.88 billion in 2021, and $19.45 billion on online marketing alone in 2024. This number continues to climb year after year with no end in sight. Most of the mainstream media is indeed, “Brought to you by Pfizer”. As Lieberman pointed out, “Instead of standing apart from the phenomena and earning the public trust, the press too often is caught up in the same drug-industry marketing web that also ensnares doctors, academic researchers, even the FDA, leaving the public without a reliable watchdog.”
Authors of the book, Virusmania, succinctly sum up Big Pharma’s use of the media. “To play out their modern marketing script: first by depicting scenarios of horror, creating the desire and demands for a remedy (typically in drug form)– and finally, the miracle substances come to the rescue, providing the pharmaceutical companies and their researchers high profits.” Of course, none of this would matter if avian bird flu was actually causing illness and death in animals or humans.
Where is the evidence
In 2005, Government, health agencies and media around the world, launched a campaign against avian bird flu, all claiming proof of the pathogenicity (disease causing) and pandemic potential of H5N1. Several scientists, doctors and investigative reporters concerned with the extreme response and messaging based on seemingly little scientific evidence, presented four fundamental questions to these entities regarding avian bird flu.
- An independent study with proof of existence (isolation, purification, characterization and genetic sequencing
- Proof that the H5N1 virus has pathogenic effects on animals
- Sound evidence that ruled out other factors (chemical toxins, foreign proteins, stress etc, as causes of the avian disease.)
- Proof that H5N1 can jump to the human species
None of the government agencies or media could provide answers to these questions despite attempts. Some directed the questions to private entities such as the Robert Koch Institute which could not surface answers either.
Taxpayer dollars funding this mania, potent claims of lethality and mass extermination of millions of birds were all surging yet no one appeared to have evidence of proof of existence of the virus and its resulting disease. Computer generated models and artistic renditions of bird flu were offered for marketing but answers were not provided to these legitimate questions.
Worldwide, the media falsely reported millions of bird deaths due to avian bird flu, when in fact, in all cases, there were a few sick animals (with unverifiable causes for illness) and in a pure mania based on an overreacting media and politicized science hype with zero scientific process, millions of healthy birds were gassed, lethally injected, and electrocuted while economic damages reached over hundreds of millions in losses and many farmers became impoverished.
For years, microbiologist and virologist Stefan Lanka has been vocal in describing the process that should occur in order to verify the existence of a virus and its ability to create illness and be transmitted. Lanka is most well known for offering a reward in 2011 of 100,000 euros to anyone who could provide a scientific publication proving the existence of and size of the measles virus. This challenge resulted in a court case in Germany in 2016 in which the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court ruled in Lanka’s favor.
Lanka announced, “Five experts participated in the process and presented the results of scientific studies. All five experts, including Prof. Dr. Andreas Podbielski, who was appointed by the court of first instance, agreed that none of the six publications submitted to the trial contained scientific evidence of the existence of the alleged measles virus. The six publications presented in the trial are the authoritative publications on the ‘measles virus’”. “Apart from these six publications, there are demonstrably no other publications in which scientific methods have been used to attempt to prove the existence of the measles virus.”
One participating expert, Dr. David Bardens appealed the ruling to Bundesgerichtshof (BGH), the highest court in Germany, but the appeal was dismissed in 2016. Dr. Lanka continues to advocate for this scientific process of isolating and determining pathogenicity and gold standard diagnostics for viral pathogens. The broader scientific community, especially the highly politicized public health realm continues to ignore these fundamental steps required to assign cause of illness and contagion to a specific microbe.
The author is a clinical nutritionist in St. Johnsbury.