Chicken flu a massive threat to human lives

CHICKEN FLU poses a “massively frightening” potential threat to humanity, a leading medical journal said yesterday.

The Lancet medical journal warned in an editorial that standard vaccines would be useless against the virus if it started spreading through human communities.

At present, the avian influenza strain, known as H5N1, is not thought capable of passing from person to person. However, experts fear it might acquire the ability if its DNA mingles with that of a human flu virus. Such “reassortment” is a well-known feature of viruses.