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Essay on Avian Influenza and Its Expected Ramifications

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Over the past fifteen years H5N1 influenza (also known as Avian Flu or Bird Flu) has become a common topic of speculation and debate worldwide, causing quite a bit of confusion about its possible impacts on our society. At this point in time it is generally recognized by the international medical community that Avian Flu is bound to become a pandemic, most likely within the next ten years. Research on Avian Flu and its effects have led many scholars to make grave predictions of major global turmoil while a small portion of medical scientists remain skeptical, believing we will have enough time to thoroughly prepare for the outbreak. The one thing that nearly all health professionals seem to agree upon is that the avian flu will surely …show more content…

There are many different types of flu, categorized most broadly by influenza A, B, and C strains. They are further classified by genetic differences represented by H and N. Seasonal flus are either type A or B and classified by H3N2, swine flu (a flu strain you may remember by the media stir it caused in 2009) is type A and H1N1, and avian flu is type A and H5N1. Type A flu strains are considered to be the most severe and are usually the only type of influenza that can cause a pandemic. On paper the avian flu may seem like the flu strains that we experience every year, but H5N1 is certainly unique. The first reason for this is that research has suggested that for currently idiopathic reasons the avian flu seems to have a predisposition to mutation, enabling it to rapidly create new strains that may be more dangerous, more contagious, or even resistant to antibiotics (which has already been observed in at least one case of an infected Vietnamese teenager). The reason avian flu has not yet caused any major outbreaks is because right now the virus is unable to be transmitted from human to human, only from bird to bird or bird to human. With such a high tendency to mutate, it is only a matter of time before the avian flu mutates into a strain that can be transmitted between

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