In reply to Judy Stierand's letter (March 2) calling for the killing of street cats because they may carry bird flu, her fears are groundless. I wondered how long it would take somebody to point the finger at feral cats after the Associated Press article was printed.
The cats that developed bird flu were laboratory cats introduced to the virus experimentally. Some cats then passed it to others in the experiment. This only showed mammal-to-mammal transmission is possible, which was not known before. There has been no case of cat-to-human transmission.

In real street life, a cat that became infected after eating an infected bird would hide out and quickly die. Humans do not eat cats, so we would be safe. Cats living in the homes of human Asian flu victims were found to be healthy.

To quote Michael Lei, a University of Southern California microbiology professor, "If transmission occurred easily, we should have seen widespread flu infection in cats in the Asian flu epidemic arise in the past few years. This did not happen."

We won't ever destroy every disease-carrying vector, so as always, the way to fight illness is strengthening our individual health and immunity.

Linda East
Greensboro