Bird Flu has shown up in Nigeria. The presence of bird flu in this location is particularly unsettling due to the inability of global health agencies to control and track its progress. However, the most interesting challenge is due to the prevalence of AIDs in many African countries:
"If H5N1 gets into people with AIDS it would likely persist and throw off mutants left, right and center," the British virologist Dr. Oxford said. (the New York Times, February 12, 2006, "Experts Sound Alarm as Bird Flu Spreads")
The genetic sharing that occurs when two horizontal pathogens are combined in a single host can create a more lethal entity. For survivability, this new more lethal entity will need to improve its transmission and increase its persistence in a treated host. Sounds like the same situation we are facing with the
combination of rapidly evolving transnational criminal
networks and
open source terrorists. The net result:
global guerrillas.