A call for a global justice response to the threat of pandemic flu

Today humanity faces a massive global threat from avian influenza ('bird flu'). Leading researchers believe a human pandemic is not only inevitable but overdue.

In December 2006, the Lancet medical journal estimated that a global H5N1 influenza pandemic could kill over 60 million people - 96% of them in the Global South.

In 1918, an influenza virus killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years. Overwhelmingly, these deaths took place in the Global South. People with HIV and AIDS will be particularly vulnerable to a new influenza pandemic, along with those affected by malnutrition and war.

The world needs:

* an end to corporate patents that restrict access to critical medicines
* urgent funding by the rich world to boost health and surveillance systems in countries most at risk in Asia and Africa
* the elimination of large-scale intensive livestock farming, which is accelerating the development of new pandemic viruses.

Corporate greed and Western self-interest are blocking these urgently-needed actions.

The Global Justice Movement can and must take action now.

Signed by:
Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Walden Bello, Mike Davis (author of 'The Monster At Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu'), Michael Greger MD (author 'Bird Flu: A virus of our own hatching'), Caroline Lucas (Green MEP, UK), John Pilger, Jonathan Stevenson (Pandemic Action), Kathy Kelly (Voices for Creative Nonviolence), Michael Albert (ZNet), Mairead Corrigan Maguire (Nobel Peace Prize Winner), Hans von Sponeck (former UN Assistant Secretary-General), Denis Halliday (former UN Assistant Secretary-General) and others.

*****

Pandemic Action is a new group based in the UK provoked into action by the book 'The Monster At Our Door' by US professor Mike Davis. Members include Gabriel Carlyle (Voices in the Wilderness UK), Jonathan Stevenson (Jubilee Debt Campaign), Milan Rai (Justice Not Vengeance), Patrick Nicholson (Scientists for Global Responsibility), and Martin Hearson (British Overseas NGOs for Development) (all in personal capacities).

more questions

XXXVI

In the end, won't death
be an endless kitchen?

What will your disintegrated bones do,
search once more for your form?

Will your destruction merge
with another voice and other light?

Will your worms become part
of dogs or of butterflies?


XXXVII

Will Czechoslovakians or turtles
be born from your ashes?

Will your mouth kiss carnations
with other, imminent lips?

But do you know from where death
comes, from above or from below?

From microbes or walls,
from wars or winter?


- Pablo Neruda
The Book of Questions

Dear tonsils,

You must be enjoying this. Most of the time, I don’t even know you guys are there, I don’t pay you any attention. You’re just, you know, there, doing your thing, guarding the gates to the rest of my body, doing your job, keeping out the riff raff.

Then once in a while, you get fed up and need to make your presence felt. But do you really need to swell up to twice your size to be heard? Do you really need to grow specks of pus all over yourselves, putting me at risk of strep throat, just to remind me that you’re there? Do you really need to set me back $40 in doctor’s fees for that?

I’m not angry, really. It’s actually nice to have the day off work, even if I spend most of it trying to sleep over the sound of the phone ringing and the sms beeping. It’s just, why do you have to make it so painful? If I’m not wincing from swallowing the gross-tasting Campbell’s Minestrone Soup-in-a-can, then I’m walking around in a drugged up stupor not even properly able to comprehend why Grisam is looking extra-serious in the CSI episode I’m watching. Next time you feel under-appreciated, couldn’t you just, like, wave or something? Or just get something stuck between you guys so that I need to cough for awhile and then be thankful that you’re around to protect me. No? Aw, come on…

Anyway, in order to avoid any future misunderstandings, let’s clear the air once and for all. I appreciate you. I would never get rid of you, never. You’re my first line of defence and I will continue to invest in you until the day I die. If it helps, from now on, I promise to drink more lemon-honey-barley drink from the Chinese herbal medicine shop and put less chilli sauce on my Boon Tong Kee chicken rice. Anything else you need from me, I’m there. I hope that we can agree to deal with any future differences in a more amicable and less painful manner than the current situation permits.

Yours Sincerely,
burgersandurians