Comment from Nadia Alexan re: Swine Flu

Dear Editor:
It is always surprising to see how quickly we react to medical disasters without ever trying to find out the real causes for such pandemics. Somehow we manage to glide over the fact that the swine flu is the direct result of modern industrial farming methods, where pigs live in unsanitary conditions, in cramped quarters, stacked like sardines, with not enough standing room and where they never see the light of day. In such insalubrious conditions, the animals are pumped with antibiotics to prevent disease and injected with hormones to fatten them up quickly for slaughter. The overuse of antibiotics in hog factories results in resistant viral infections, while sewage spills are producing E coli bacteria that seep into our rivers, lakes, and waterways. Scientists have been warning us that such harmful farming methods are bound to produce an outbreak of viral disease. But powerful livestock producers stand in the way of serious health regulation by threatening to withhold financial contributions to various political parties. The WHO has failed to protect citizens from the stranglehold of big pharma and the catastrophe of giant, commercial livestock farming. Let's call a spade a spade. The commercialization of every aspect of our lives, and the greed for fast gain and the maximization of profits, is destroying both the planet and its inhabitants.

- Nadia Alexan