This article is from the WebMD Commentary Archive

March 29, 2006 -- After several years of trying to educate myself in order to answer questions from my anxious patients about nerve gas, anthrax, swine flu, mad cow disease, West Nile virus, SARS, and now bird flu, I find myself thinking wistfully back to 1963 when, as a 10-year-old, all I had to worry about was total nuclear annihilation.

Pandemic bird flu (or avian flu) is the latest in a series of problems that have kept us in a heightened state of alert for years now. This cannot be good for anybody's sanity. We are wired evolutionarily for brief surges of adrenaline, "fight or flight" responses that temporarily put us in overdrive. But what engine can remain in overdrive for years at a time without becoming seriously fried?

I have tried my best to stay informed and to provide logical advice. I've tried to walk the very thin line between having a sense of humor about the insanity and sounding flip about fears that might just prove real. I do like to point out that - at present - bird flu is mainly a problem for birds. Bird flu is a contagious disease that is caused by influenza A viruses. Although it spreads easily among birds, it has not so far been able to spread easily between humans. There are fewer than 200 cases of human infection worldwide and these cases are almost entirely in patients who had close contact with sick birds. The few cases of human-to-human transmission of bird fluhuman-to-human transmission of bird flu have required very close contact with an ill patient.

Nobody wants to overreact, but nobody wants to be caught unprepared. Responsible members of the media are faced with the difficult task of properly informing without needlessly alarming the public. Irresponsible members of the media are having a field day. Unfiltered information constantly floods into the Web. When I began writing this article on March 11, a Google search of "bird flu" yielded 86 million hits. When I finished on March 24, the same search yielded 104 million hits. How are we supposed to make sense of it all?