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Experts: Don't Blame Pigs for Swine Flu

H1N1 virus likely arose among jet-setting humans

By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

Posted May 9, 2009 6:09 AM CDT

(Newser) – The humble porker shouldn't be the one taking the blame for the H1N1 virus, scientists tell the Los Angeles Times. Pigs provided some of the raw material for the virus, experts say, but so did birds and humans. The most likely incubators and spreaders of the virus, according to scientists, were jet-setting humans whose bodies mixed and matched different strains of flu.

"The easy way out is to blame the pig," said one leading flu expert. "This is a human virus." Scientists say measures like Egypt's mass slaughter of pigs will do nothing to stop the spread of the virus and stress that the only confirmed case of H1N1 in pigs so far has been in a herd in Canada—which caught it from a human.

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Pigs stand on a farm on the outskirts of Xicaltepec in Mexico's Veracruz state, near where the H1N1 virus was first found. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini)

Pgs press together on the outskirts of Xicaltepec in Mexico's Veracruz state. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini, File)

An Egyptian medical team examines pigs before slaughtering them at a public slaughterhouse in Cairo, Egypt. (AP Photo/Nasser Nouri)

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Do pigs contribute to the flu gene pool? Yeah, and so do people and so do wild birds. I just don't agree that pigs are an evil mixing vessel just boiling over with flu that's pumping out to people on a regular basis.
- virologist Dr. Kurt Rossow

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Experts: Don't Blame Pigs for Swine Flu