Sunday 3 May 2009

Mike Davis: Capitalism and the flu


by Mike Davis  
from Socialist Worker (US)
27 April 2009

Mike Davis, whose 2006 book The Monster at Our Door warned of the threat of a global bird flu pandemic, explains how globalised agribusiness set the stage for a frightening outbreak of the swine flu in Mexico.

The spring break hordes returned from Cancun this year with an invisible but sinister souvenir. The Mexican swine flu, a genetic chimera probably conceived in the fecal mire of an industrial pigsty, suddenly threatens to give the whole world a fever.

Initial outbreaks across North America reveal an infection rate already travelling at higher velocity than the last official pandemic strain, the 1968 Hong Kong flu.  

Continue at http://socialistworker.org/print/2009/04/27/capitalism-and-the-flu  

See also Swine flu and a sick social system: Why the poor die and the rich sniffle

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