Chinese reveal earliest human case of bird flu

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Chinese scientists said Wednesday that a man initially thought to have SARS actually died of bird flu in November 2003 -- two years before the communist country reported any human bird flu infections to the World Health Organization.
At the last minute, the scientists asked without explanation to withdraw the report, but a medical journal had already printed it. The man's death in Beijing raises the possibility that other cases attributed to SARS may have actually been the deadly H5N1 flu.
"It's hard to believe that this is the only person in all of China who developed H5N1" that year, said Dr. John Treanor, a flu expert at the University of Rochester.