Flu could wipe out 62 million people...

... says the Lancet (see here). 62 million people equates to something like one per cent of the world's population.

We need a virus that's a hell of a lot more effective than that if we're going to stem the almost-parasitic spread of humankind across the globe. Brian May puts it best in his blog when points out that humans are merely another species of animal (see entry for 14th December, here). We laud ourselves over everything else - helped by misguided religious texts like Genesis that gave man "dominion" over the beasts and the earth. But when it all boils down to it, we're still as nasty and brutish as the worst species that share this planet with us, and maybe our brains are bigger and more developed, but that's got nothing to do with divine intervention and everything to do with an inordinate amount of luck. And at least other creatures don't have the powers of reasoning to rise above it all. What's our excuse again?