# 3385
Donald G. McNeil Jr., science and health writer for the New York Times, has a long and very interesting article today on an alternate theory about how the novel H1N1 swine flu virus emerged.
While there’s been no evidence of any matching swine flu virus circulating among pigs in North America (save the one farm in Alberta, Canada) the virus does closely match a `sister’ swine flu virus found in Asia.
This is an interesting theory, but as McNeil points out, proving it is quite another matter.
This is a fascinating article, so follow the link to read it in its entirety.
Swine Flu May Have Come From Asia
Published: June 23, 2009
Contrary to the popular assumption that the new swine flu pandemic arose on factory farms in Mexico, federal agriculture officials now believe it most likely emerged in pigs in Asia but then traveled to North America in a human.
However, they emphasized that there is no way to prove their theory and only sketchy data underpinning it.
There is no evidence that this new virus, which combines both Eurasian and North American genes, has ever circulated in North American pigs, while there is tantalizing evidence that a closely related “sister virus” has circulated in Asia.
American breeding pigs, possibly carrying North American swine flu, are frequently exported to Asia, where the flu may have combined with Asian strains. But, because of disease quarantines that make it difficult to import Asian pigs, it is unlikely that a pig brought the new strain back West.
“The most likely scenario is that it came over in the mammalian species that moves most freely around the world,” said Dr. Amy L. Vincent, a swine flu specialist at the agriculture department’s laboratory in Ames, Iowa, referring, of course, to people.
(Continue . . .)
