The Birds! The Birds! The Birds! Should We Be Scared of Bird Flu

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The Birds! The Birds! The Birds! Should We Be Scared of Bird Flu or Is It All Just Hype-Driven Hogwash?

Alfred Hitchcock's film "The Birds" instilled a fear of winged creatures across the nation. More than 40 years later, the much-hyped bird flu is freaking many people out in the same way. The disease may mutate into a form that's dangerous to humans and - just like Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor in "The Birds" - we might not be prepared for the possible consequences. Should we be scared? That depends on who you ask. Avian influenza - commonly know as bird flu - certainly sounds dangerous. It's already killed millions of birds and more than 60 people in Asia since 2003.

It was recently found in birds in Turkey and Romania. The World Health Organization warned that the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily from person to person, possibly triggering a global pandemic. In a worst-case scenario, deaths have been forecast in the millions. "It's certainly something be scared about," says Dr. Richard Webby of the infections diseases department of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. "This virus is a very nasty virus. It is as bad as any flu virus that we've seen in terms of its disease-causing capabilities. The situation now is different than any other time that people have been looking at influenza viruses."

Dr. Morris Chaftez isn't so sure. Chaftez, author of "Big Fat Liars: How Politicians, Corporations and the Media Use Science and Statistics to Manipulate the Public," says scientists are playing a numbers game. "I played the same game," he says. "I don't want you to think I'm very special and perfect. When I founded a federal agency - the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism - I realized the bigger the numbers were, the more money we were appropriated and the greater power I got. Predicting the future about human beings is part of building yourself up. I don't know if the avian flu is gonna come, but the threat of it is the way people get power and resources."

Catherine Kudlick, a University of California, Davis historian who wrote "Cholera in Post-Revolutionary Paris: A Cultural History," says the public reaction to the bird flu greatly mirrors what happened in the 19th century's cholera epidemic. On one side, there are hysterical people afraid of widespread death. On the other side: the skeptics, more worried about their golf game than deadly birdies. "Those two forces are always in tension in an epidemic," says Kudlick. "We saw with SARS a lot of people jumped to conclusions right away and nothing happened. I think that's going to give people cause for thought. They'll think, 'Oh, they warned us about SARS and nothing happened so probably nothing will happen this time.' That's kind of what happened with cholera, too."

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1. More Bird Flu TERRA coming out after KKKarl Rove comes out of the

indictment.