# 1846
Last December, I, along with nearly every other flu blogger, covered the story of the son and father from China infected with bird flu. For those yearning for a trip down memory lane, you can find blogs here, here, here, and here about this case.
Throughout the month of December Chinese officials insisted there was no human-to-human transmission of the virus. In fact, the story released on December 10th was a tortured affair involving the shared consumption of `beggar's Chicken' and a series of rabies shots the son was supposedly undergoing.
For comedy relief, you can read Don't Order The Beggar's Chicken. While this theory certainly deserved points of originality, few observers accepted it as credible.
Five months later we are now getting the explanation that many observers were openly discussing last December; that the father caught the H5N1 virus from his son.
While human-to-human transmission of the bird flu virus remains thankfully rare, it does happen on occasion.
This report from the BBC.
Father 'caught bird flu from son'
Bird flu cannot easily infect humans at present
Tests on a father diagnosed with bird flu in China show he probably caught the disease from his dying son.
Scientists are concerned that if the virus evolves to pass easily from human to human millions could be at risk.
A genetic analysis of the Chinese case published in The Lancet found no evidence to suggest the virus had gained that ability.
But an expert has warned that failure to control outbreaks of disease in poultry is fuelling the risk to humans.
Writing in The Lancet, Dr Jeremy Farrar, of Vietnam's Hospital for Tropical Diseases, said: "Whatever the underlying determinants, if we continue to experience widespread, uncontrolled outbreaks of H5N1 in poultry, the appearance of strains well adapted to human beings might just be matter of time."
However, he said a pandemic was by no means a "biological inevitability".
<snip>
The Lancet study highlights the case of a 24-year-old man, from Nanjing, in Jiangsu Province, who died from bird flu.
It is thought he passed the disease on to his 52-year-old father, who survived after receiving prompt medical attention, including anti-viral treatment, and plasma cells from somebody who had been vaccinated against the disease.
It is believed the son caught the disease during a visit to a poultry market six days before he became ill.
<snip>
"The virus isolated had no changes to indicate adaptation to human infection," he said.
"There is no indication from this data that we are any nearer a pandemic."
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