UK Viewers: Equinox March 16 Beating BF Special

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Beating Bird Flu: An Equinox Special

March 16, 4:00

"The world is preparing for a new natural disaster. As deadly H5N1 bird flu spreads across the planet, scientists fear it could mutate, passing from human to human, resulting in a global catastrophe. This Equinox Special follows the story of three of the world's top flu experts and their race against time to understand the virus, and so prevent a pandemic. Prod/ Dir: Tim Tate; Exec Prod: Liz McLeod; Prod Co: Granada"


http://www.channel4sales.com/program...ate=16-03-2006

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Re: UK Viewers: Equinox March 16 Beating BF Special

Tue 14 Mar 2006 Sleepless nights over our feathered friends

LOUISA PEARSON
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/s2.c...6&format=print

Equinox Special: Beating Bird Flu, Channel 4

IF YOU are a parent, I have a few words of advice: don't let your young children watch Hitch****'s The Birds. I'm sure you wouldn't, but just in case you are considering it, I can confirm that it leads to a lifelong paranoia about "our feathered friends". Along with The Poseidon Adventure, The Birds was a film that gave my younger self nightmares. The worst of them involved being trapped in an upturned cruise liner filled with crows. Today if I see a flapping wing out the corner of my eye, hear the screech of a seabird or, heaven forbid, witness a menacing flock of crows perched on a climbing frame, clammy hands and shortness of breath are soon to follow.

But having suffered in silence for years, now it seems the rest of the world is catching up with me. Blame it on the bird flu. Even those who faithfully fill their garden bird feeders each day are washing their hands rigorously after replenishing the peanuts. People more paranoid than me are buying Tamiflu off the internet, just in case. Equinox Special: Beating Bird Flu aimed to separate fact from fiction.

This was largely a factual programme, but it couldn't help spicing things up a little. The voiceover didn't say "bird flu", it whispered "deadly bird flu" in the breathy style of a Marks & Spencer's food commercial. To help prevent a bird flu pandemic, it seems that today's top scientists have decided to become "history detectives", investigating the 1918 flu that killed 50 million people worldwide, before applying their findings to the current crisis. I was visualising them stepping into a TARDIS, Doctor Who-style, but that was wishful thinking.

Equinox succeeded with the history lesson and made light work of the science of bird flu, too. Brightly coloured graphics representing the flu virus attacking human cells made the infection process seem like a computer game. Even the language was suitable for the layman - who knew that the flu virus uses "tiny grappling hooks" to attack healthy cells? At the core of the tale was Professor John Oxford's research into the 1918 flu. It turned out that this virus had started off life as a bird flu, before jumping the species barrier and allowing human to human transmission. From here on in, things got technical, with secret US labs recreating viruses and men in biohazard suits talking about "deadly mutations".

By the end of the programme, we'd been told that study of 1918 flu meant that scientists could better monitor the progress of the current bird flu. Should it show signs of becoming infectious through breathing, the docs could be straight in there with the Tamiflu. However, there is still the chance that if someone with ordinary flu catches bird flu as well, another hybrid virus could emerge and bump most of us off. Everybody looked calm, but I swear I heard someone off camera say: "head for the hills".

<SNIP>(next reviewed is another unrelated programme)

This article: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/s2.cfm?id=379042006
Last updated: 14-Mar-06 01:30 GMT