WASHINGTON -- Millions of people around the world have contracted a strange and potentially fatal virus -- from space alien feces!

And at least one expert predicts that by the year 2002, one in every two Americans will have had the debilitating illness.

Controversial internist Dr. Marcus Balinter says that tens of thousands of the Americans who reported flu symptoms last season were not infected with the flu at all. He said they were suffering from an illness that is contracted by eating beef, lamb, chicken and other meat contaminated with the bodily wastes of extraterrestrial visitors.

Hundreds of Americans in the Deep South and the Midwest may have died from the virus, he said, and countless others may die in countries around the world.

"Hundreds of extremely reliable witnesses report encounters with space aliens in the United States each year, so there is little doubt that extraterrestrials are here among us," Dr. Balinter says. "Even the most conservative of the experts say there are probably half a million aliens in the Earth's atmosphere right now."

Dr. Balinter says he concluded that space alien feces causes many earthly illnesses after consulting with an international group of UFO experts. They say that alien dung is solid at first, but as it decomposes it takes on the color and consistency of grain.

Farm animals can't tell the difference.

"Most UFO and space alien sightings occur in rural areas," Dr. Balinter says. "They stay out of the cities to lessen the chance of being discovered.

"They dump their waste products into fields and streams and many other places where it ends up being consumed by livestock. These animals digest the disease-ridden material and we, in turn, eat their flesh.

"The waste products contain a virus that produces flu-like symptoms. It overpowers the human immune system."

Dr. Balinter's theory has had little support among his colleagues in the medical field.

But he is unfazed.

"As more people come down with this mysterious 'flu,' scientists will have to look more deeply into the cause," he says. "When they do, they will see that I'm right."