An international conference of 400 experts in Verona, Italy concurred that there is no sign yet that the deadly H5N1 strain of the avian flu virus has mutated to allow person-to-person infection.

H5N1 has killed scores of people worldwide, and has been found in 11 countries this year, but almost all the people who have come down with the virus have been shown to have been infected through contact with domestic birds.

It was also noted at the conference that the H5N1 virus has been found in only a few birds in Italy itself, even though the country is a major migration route for birds traveling from Africa to Europe

Dr. Mercola's Comment:

It's been nearly a year since I asked rhetorically, whatever happened to the bird flu epidemic that never came? And, we're still waiting.

President Bush warned that in the United States alone anywhere from 200,000 (at best!) to 2 million people at worst would die from the bird flu. How do they make the giant leap of faith that the very few deaths so far worldwide will translate to 2 million or even 200,000 deaths from a virus that does NOT readily spread from birds to humans, or humans to humans?

To this date the has not been one single person who has caught this from another human. Virtually every reported case was in a third-world country in which those who were infected had close contact with sick birds.

And why were these birds sick? Not because of some terrible lethal virus. Quite the contrary my friends. It was largely because they were raised under factory-farming conditions that, combined with the terrible food they were given, weakened their immune systems and allowed them to come down with this deadly infection.

Interestingly, this is very similar to the way that many humans actually get sick. The take-home message here, folks, is that it is in no way, shape or form the virus that is the cause of the infection, it is the weakened immune system that results from following or choosing an unhealthy lifestyle.

But the drug companies and secondarily the governments they control will rarely miss an opportunity to use these scare tactics.

Even though the experts at the Italian conference knew this, that fact didn't stop them from discussing ways to prevent the avian flu from spreading, namely by using vaccines nobody needs that don't work anyway. They also conveniently forgot that even vaccinating poultry wasn't a foolproof solution either.

All of which neatly points to the reason for the scare tactics -- kickbacks to drug companies. Their drugs may be useless, but the massive windfall from government contracts to help "prepare" against avian flu has helped their bottom lines nicely, not to mention the profits of their allies in the government.

You'll learn more about the hidden agenda behind the avian flu epidemic that never came after reading The Great Bird Flu Hoax: The Truth They Don't Want You to Know About the "Next Big Pandemic."

Related Articles:

Finally Medical Journal Admits the Truth About Bird Flu

Avian Flu Epidemic Scare is a Hoax

Another Bird Flu Scam