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| Edited By: Kumar Chellappan |Source: DNA |Updated: Apr 08, 2012, 11:38 PM IST
Tamil Nadu is agog with reports of swine flu spreading across the state. Nearly 30 cases of swine flu have been reported and a farmer has succumbed allegedly due to the disease.
But two eminent physicians say the instances of swine flu cases are being blown out of proportion for commercial reasons.
Swine flu is far less dangerous than ordinary flu as evident during the epidemic in New Zealand in 2009.
What we see right now is an attempt to portray it as a pandemic. The WHO itself bungled in 2010 by declaring it as pandemic. It was forced to withdraw the warning, BM Hegde, cardiologist and CV Krishnaswamy, physician, told DNA.
According to Prof Hegde, former vice-chancellor of Manipal University, the usual reports of swine flu in newspapers refer only to a simple screening Elisa Test.
“This has a sensitivity and specificity of less than 50%, which means there are as many false positives as there are false negatives. The test was devised by the same pharmaceutical company which has the world right for selling TAMIFLU. The still darker side of the story is that this test has never been authenticated by an independent scientific body,” explained Hegde.
