Killer Ducks

Smithsonian Magazine
January, 2005 edition
Page 41
Reporting on the Avian bird flu recently found in Asia

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Robert Webster one of the worlds leading Virologist thinks the “duck is the world's most dangerous animal.”

His research has shown that ducks can transmit flu viruses quite easily to chickens.

But while chickens that come down with bird flu die at rates approaching 100 percent, many ducks don’t get sick at all. So they fly off to other parts of the world carrying the virus.

“The duck is the Trojan horse,” Webster says.

The virus passed directly from birds to people, killing dozens in what the World Health Organization has described as the worst outbreak of purely avian influenza ever to strike human beings.

Webster says, “ The world is teetering on the edge of a knife blade”.

He thinks the H5N1 strain poses the most serious public health threat since the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 40 million to 100 million people worldwide.