Granja de animales: el cerdo en el medio

La pandemia de gripe del 2009 pone de relieve la necesidad urgente de un organismo internacional independiente para la investigación de enfermedades humanas que se originan en los animales.
Cuando los patógenos animales hacen el salto hacia los humanos –como ha ocurrido con la pandemia del virus que se originó en cerdos en el 2009- los científicos que se dedican a la salud animal se han visto a sí mismos en una posición embarazosa. A diferencia de otros colegas en salud pública quienes concentran sus energías en proteger los 6.8 billones de humanos del planeta, los especialistas en salud animal tienden a trabajar a través de agencias gubernamentales cuya misión primaria es promover y proteger el ganado nacional e internacional y el mercado cárnico.
Esta concentración en el comercio ha conllevado conflictos de interés, así como a algunas políticas que rayan en la negación. Desde los primeros brotes de la pandemia viral del 2009 en Estados Unidos y México, por ejemplo, la Organización Mundial para la Salud Animal (OIE) con base en París, ha gastado considerable energía tratando de evitar que las personas llamen al virus como “influenza porcina”. La preocupación legítima de la OIE es que esta nomenclatura podría tener efectos adversos sobre el comercio, y que algunos países tomen medidas innecesarias tales como el sacrificio de rebaños o invocar la prohibición del comercio de cerdos y carne de cerdo. Sin embargo, desde el punto de vista estrictamente científico, hay suficiente evidencia genética de que el nombre es apropiado. Se trata de un virus de la gripe porcina mezclado el que ha pasado de los cerdos a los seres humanos.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7249/full/459889a.html

The OIE has also played down the possibility that the 2009 pandemic flu might be spreading in pigs, noting that it has not been found in any animals outside of one farm in Canada. But how vigorous has the search been? There is no requirement that the authorities be notified of flu in pigs, as the animals generally recover, and farmers have little incentive to report an outbreak in their herds given the potential repercussions. Furthermore, little funding has been available for extensive surveillance. A case in point is the European Surveillance Network for Influenza in Pigs, whose paltry 100,000 (US$139,000) in annual funding expired in March, just a month before the pandemic strain was first detected. Yet public-health researchers say that if the virus is circulating in pigs, and moving back and forth between pigs and humans, it increases the risk that the virus will genetically reassort into a more dangerous pathogen (see page 894).
The human–animal disease interface is fraught with such competing agendas. But to the OIE’s credit, it has had a key role in creating a body that could be a model for a credible, honest broker. Founded jointly with the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 2005, the OIE/FAO Network of Expertise on Animal Influenza (OFFLU) has been bringing together labs working on surveillance and research of human infectious diseases that have arisen in animals. OFFLU has also been outspoken on the need for countries to share virus samples and sequences for research (see Nature 440, 255–256; 2006) and has built important bridges with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other public-health agencies.
What is needed now is international support for a greatly expanded OFFLU-like network that has enough funding to do its own research and to coordinate global surveillance efforts on influenza and other diseases emerging from animals. The WHO and other public-health organizations should also be made an integral part of the network.
The 2009 pandemic has forced scientists to confront the elephant — or pig — in the room, which is that surveillance of human diseases that originate in animals remains in the nineteenth century (see Nature 440, 6–7; 2006), and is chronically underfunded. Animal- and public-health bodies must now step up and fund a serious joint initiative in this area.