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Scientist: No hope of eradicating bird flu
AN Australian scientist credited with a major role in eradicating smallpox says humanity may not be able to wipe out any more infectious diseases - including bird flu.Professor Frank Fenner, who launched his autobiography in Canberra today, said the world has changed since he announced smallpox eradication at the World Health Assembly in 1980. The 91-year-old, whose other major achievement was controlling Australia's rabbit plague using the myxomatosis virus which he famously injected into himself to prove its safety to humans said smallpox was the only disease scientists had wiped out. Prof Fenner chaired the global committee charged with determining if smallpox had been eradicated, and his knowledge was instrumental in demonstrating that no animals carried the virus. Ridding the world of smallpox was made easier because it could be diagnosed easily from a distinctive skin rash, whereas the majority of people infected with the other most likely candidates for eradication - polio and rubella - display little or no symptoms, he said. Prof Fenner said smallpox cost $200 million to eradicate, while polio had already cost $4 billion and was still present in several countries. "Despite enormous efforts, really astonishing efforts, it's very hard to get rid of it entirely," he said. "The world has got so much more difficult. "There was no air travel to speak of, or not much, in the smallpox days compared to nowadays. "And that is why we are so worried about the possibility of this H5N1 (bird) flu, because if it retains its virulence and is transmissible from person to person, then it will be around the world whatever you do about it." Prof Fenner, who won the Prime Minister's Prize for Science in 2002 and the Japan Prize in 1988, said influenza was humanity's greatest disease threat. "The 1918 epidemic is said to have killed between 20 and 40 million people, and this is much more virulent that that," he said. "That only had a five per cent mortality, and there was no air travel. "If it got into Africa, there is no way in which you could get vaccination running throughout Africa. It would be hard enough in the industrialised countries to get it going." Prof Fenner's 23rd book, which also details the life of his father Charles, covers almost a century of the family's involvement in Australia's research community. Prof Fenner, who remains a visiting fellow at Australian National University's John Curtin School of Medical Research, said his father a geologist, science writer and geographer as well as a state director of education was his inspiration to become a medical researcher. Posted by: Oztralian 2006-08-01 |
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