Does bird flu have wings? Experts debate risk

November 20, 2005

BY MARILYNN MARCHIONE AND MALCOLM RITTER

History is supposed to teach. But past flu pandemics, it turns out, don't teach much about whether today's bird flu will become a human megakiller or just make some scientists and officials look like Chicken Little.

In a viral sense, the sky has fallen three times in the last century -- 1918, 1957 and 1968 -- when "superflu" strains killed millions more people than annual flu epidemics routinely do.

Back then, there weren't surveillance systems or modern genetic tools to detect and document viruses as they evolved into killer strains. Because scientists don't know how that evolution happened or how long it took, they can't tell us whether what we're seeing with now is the runup to a pandemic.

"My crystal ball doesn't allow me to answer that," said Dr. Frederick Hayden, a University of Virginia flu expert.

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