Bioterrorism (2005)

Nature’s Bioterrorist

Is there any way to prevent a deadly avian-flu pandemic?

By Michael Specter

February 21, 2005

Early last September, an eleven-year-old girl from Kamphaeng Phet, a remote village in Thailand, developed a high fever, a severe cough, and a sore throat. She lived with her aunt and uncle in a one-room wooden house—not much more than a hut on stilts. The family had fifteen chickens, which wandered freely beneath the plank floor, where the young girl often played and slept. Then, at the end of August, the chickens died. Within days, the girl was sick, too. Her aunt took her to the hospital, but the fever kept rising. The girl’s mother, who lived near Bangkok, where she worked at a factory, rushed to her bedside; sixteen hours later, her daughter was dead. In keeping with Thai custom, she was cremated immediately./.../

“One day, they’re all alive and healthy,” a Thai chicken farmer said. “The next day, they’re dying by the thousand.”De Loustal Jacques