Reply to Dr. Niman's argument that wild birds are spreading avian influenza

I thought this issue was important enough to repost here from www.agonist.org.  The points in italics are comments from Dr. Niman.

Quote from: niman on Today at 08:26:14pm
You have already provided the evidence.  The geese at Qinghai Lake were H5N1 positive and there is no reported outbreaks in domestic birds there.  Moreover, the OIE report cited 4 additional species.  Thus, the OIE report has 5 species of waterfowl that are H5N1 positive.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza has never been shown to be sustained in wild bird populations. The birds at Qinghai either could have gotten it from an area where H5N1 was widespread up until at least last fall (i.e., throughout western China) or from India where H5N1 has not been isolated, conspiracy theories aside.

Quote from: niman on Today at 08:26:14pm
H5N1 is in India, but reported as ABBT.  Serologocal tests are not designed to give false positive.  You just make it up as you go along.
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ABBT?  Never heard of it.  Is this part of the conspiracy theory?

Epidemiology 101: serological tests are screening tests.  You want them to pick up anything that might be positive (i.e., very sensitive tests).  However, increasing sensitivity reduces specificity - the likelihood of false positives (i.e., false positives become more likely).  This is not a bad thing, as screening tests are then backed up with confirmatory tests - in this case PCR virus isolation and bioassays in chickens.

There have been no such back up tests in India as far as I'm aware.  Further, there have been no reports of H5N1 in Indian poultry.  The virus has simply not been found there.

In contrast, we know H5N1 was widespread in China until last fall.

I can either believe the Chinese outbreak was not contained, or India is really playing into your conspiracy theory and suppressing all information that H5N1 is there.

Quote from: niman on Today at 08:26:14pm
Clearly you are not looking for evidence, which is in abundance at GenBank with has new sets of H5N1 sequences each season.

Yes.  New sequences of H5N1 are found each season in domestic birds.  But not in wild birds.  Low pathogenic strains are found in wild birds, and I hypothesize that its the conditions in domestic poultry/waterfowl production systems that favour evolution of high pathogenicity.

Dr. Niman, I respect that you have had a long and succesful career in microbiology, but I don't see any publications in epidemiology or wildlife ecology (your papers are listed here).  I think you have done the world a good service by keeping the pressure up on avian influenza, but I think you have to recognize that there is more to this than simply recombination.  We need a holistic approach to preventing the pandemic that is based on an understanding of the ecological and epidemiological context.

We need to focus on how we can promote wildlife, human, and domestic animal health, and the way to do that is to figure out effective strategies.  I am arguing that focussing on culling wild birds as was suggested by the news article that started this thread, is ineffective.

We need to promote biosecurity on poultry/domestic waterfowl farms:
- prevent contact between wild and domestic birds
- understand the conditions on farms that favour evolution of high pathogenicity
- understand movement of captive birds, both in poultry/waterfowl production as well as the illegal wild bird trade, so that we find the most effective control points to stop transmission.
- promote safe practices on farms so that people are not exposed.

I think we all have the same goal - to prevent the pandemic.