The bird flu, or avian influenza, is spreading in Europe. The hype and hysteria in the media are quite unprecedented. We are treated to images of dead Swans being stuffed into plastic bags by Vets in protective clothing. The stage seems set for the inevitable disaster. But is the situation really that grave?
We are told that there is no remedy, except for Tamiflu and similar drugs, which have however been found to be ineffective. Vaccines for poultry exist and are widely used. A human vaccine however is impossible to make for now. The virus must mutate to infect humans directly before the process of making a vaccine can even begin, and then it will be several months before vaccines are ready for use.
I have written previously about the hype and warned of exaggerating. But the press keeps beating the issue. "The virus is coming", is the message, and we have little or no defense, we're told.
No mention is made of the fact that illness needs a convergence of both external and internal factors to develop. External factors are environmental, including viral, challenges. Internal factors are summed up in what alternative medicine calls the terrain, the biological substrate of the host, which in our case are wild birds as well as fowl raised for production of meat and eggs.
A healthy rooster in Minas, Brazil Photo credit: Sepp
Nutrition is important in forming the terrain and preventing illness
There are important nutrients, especially the mineral selenium, which determine the immune response of organisms to invading microbes and viral particles. Selenium has been identified as one of the factors in AIDS etiology by geo-epidemiologist Harold Foster. The mineral, or rather a lack of it, is also implicated in the appearance of avian influenza, says Qu Shaozhong in a comment posted to an earlier article on this site.
Selenium supplementation for fowl is recommended where the feed grains themselves do not contain a sufficient amount of this important mineral. A novel form of delivery - nano selenium - decreases the toxicity the mineral shows at high doses by a factor of 7.
The discussion of Qu Shaozhong, somewhat edited for better readability, is highly interesting as it shows a way of increasing resistance to the avian influenza virus in the affected bird populations as well as in humans by such simple means as the nutritional supplementation of selenium.