Quoting from The Courier-Mail (Brisbane newspaper) of October 29-30:
"Should the avian flu virus trundling its way around Asia at the moment
cross to our bird and human population, Australia's Nobel Prize-winning
immunologist Dr Peter Doherty will be in the front line of our defence
forces.
"Dr Doherty, who won the prize in 1996 for discovering how the human
immune system recognised virus-infected cells ...
... down-played the possibility that migrating birds could bring H5N1
into Australia. "Everyone is agonising over the virus getting here in
birds. If it gets here in birds it might be a problem for poultry flocks
but ... most of our poultry are housed and I don't think it's very likely
that it will jump from birds to humans in Australia," he said.
BTW, Peter Doherty's recently published book "Beginner's Guide to Winning a
Nobel Prize" is one of the most fascinating books I've read in a long time
... even if his 'simplified account' of how the human immune system
recognises virus-infected cells was a bit too much for my elderly brain to
fully understand.
Syd
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