I don't know if it's because I'm an international adoptive parent who has suffered the agony of the wait, because I write about adoption every day so am constantly aware of how many people are at any given time somewhere in the process experiencing the anxiety, because I have traveled a lot and now live in a developing nation, because I'm worrier in general, or because studying history has left me with a deep well of fear, but the H5NI virus, Bird Flu, scares the padookie out of me.

Thoughts of the global spread of Avian Influenza do not fill my days now that my kids are home, but during the period between referral and travel they darned well did. Even now, I'm occasionally sideswiped by a headline, left reeling from the blow and looking askance at our feathered friends.

We're off tomorrow for a long weekend on Bird Island, and unfortunately my regular research has presented some disturbing news of H5N1 developments, so those millions of Sooty Tern chicks won't be looking all that sweet and cuddly to me, but rather like fuzzy little loaded grenades.

It doesn't matter where you are or what country you're adopting from, Bird Flu has the potential to turn this whole world of ours upside-down and inside-out in what might appear to be an overnight event. In reality, this possible disaster has been percolating since official identification in 1997 ... percolating and mutating.

Just last month, scientists discovered that the virus can pass from a mother to her fetus, and a case of this happening was documented in China.

In addition to the expected discovery on autopsy of the virus in the mother's lungs, it was also found in her trachea, in disease-fighting T cells of her lymph nodes, and in brain neurons. In addition, traces were found in the placenta, as well as the lungs, lymph system and liver cells of the fetus.

This was a surprise, and the doctor conducting the research states: This "vertical transmission" of the H5N1 virus from one part of the body to another and into the womb "warrants full investigation, since maternal infections with common human influenza virus are generally thought not to infect the fetus".

Not good news, and other studies are revealing more changes in how the virus works.

At the University of Wisconsin- Madison, researchers have found that H5N1 has mutated enough to infect people more easily, and report that the type of the virus circulating in Africa and Europe are the "ones closest to becoming a human virus".

Last month an outbreak was discovered in the Krasnodar Territory of Southern Russia, resulting in the culling of almost a quarter of a million chickens, and the government of Tanzania is taking the close to $1 million it has received for H5N1 education and putting it to work.

A list of countries already hosted infected birds is frightening: Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, China, Malaysia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Turkey, Romania, Croatia, Ukraine, Cyprus, Iraq, Nigeria, Egypt, India, France, Niger, Bosnia, Azerbaijan, Albania, Cameroon, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Israel, Pakistan, Jordan, Burkina Faso, Germany, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Hungary, United Kingdom, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Ghana, Czech Republic, Togo, Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Greece, Iran, Italy, Poland, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland.

What could happen if the virus does make the jump is so much worse:

In 2003, world-renowned virologist Robert Webster published an article titled "The world is teetering on the edge of a pandemic that could kill a large fraction of the human population" in American Scientist. He called for adequate resources to fight what he sees as a major world threat to possibly billions of lives.On September 29, 2005, David Nabarro, the newly-appointed Senior United Nations System Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza, warned the world that an outbreak of avian influenza could kill anywhere between 5 million and 150 million people.

We're now almost at the end of 2007. The virus is mutating, and for the most part the human world is doing little more than holding its collective breath and hoping for the best.

One thing that can be counted on, however, is the fact that if this does turn into a rerun of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic that killed more than 50 million people planet-wide, we will find ourselves in a different world. I have to wonder what sort of debates will take place over things like care of the planet's surviving children.

Rather puts the whole "cultural genocide" nonsense as trotted out and stuck under the international adoption umbrella in perspective, doesn't it?