This sort of superstition, cultural resistance, and denial of modern science will, if the bird flu erupts across the globe, be a primary mover in the disaster:
When the half-starved chickens started dying this summer and the barefoot children developed fevers here in this village of thatched huts and emerald rice fields, residents were terrified and deeply divided about the cause of their misfortune.
Some blamed bird flu and took their weakened children to a clinic in a nearby provincial city, where a medic diagnosed human influenza instead. But other residents said it was witchcraft by the only village resident not born here, 53-year-old Som Sorn, who moved here eight years ago when she married an elderly local farmer.
When Mrs. Som Sorn's husbandwent into the jungle to cut wood one afternoon and she began cookingrice over a fire on the dirt floor of her hut, a local man with amachete took action and later collected $30 in donations from gratefulneighbors, a month's wages.
"The assassin grabbed her hair,pulled her head back and cut her throat," said Ya Pheorng, the villageleader. "Her neck was almost completely severed."
Much like AIDS, where local witch doctors and government leaders alike told afflicted Africans that their troubles stemmed from magic, unless the WHO and local governments work to convince villagers of the viral nature of bird flu, we're going to have no chance of stopping its spread. Thanks to transportation advances, globalization, and a host of other movers, the poorest and most backwards Indonesian peasant can, with but a few degrees of separation, pass her illness onto you or I. I've no solutions, but it's a huge problem.
