[Mb-civic] Pandemic Preparedness - Washington Post Editorial

[William Swiggard]

Pandemic Preparedness

Washington Post Editorial - Monday, October 10, 2005; Page A18

SCIENTISTS AT THE Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta 
announced last week that they had reconstructed the genetic code of the 
flu virus that killed at least 50 million people in 1918. Meanwhile, 
administration officials are preparing a plan to bolster U.S. 
preparedness for another pandemic. These two facts are related: The more 
that is understood about the 1918 flu virus, the more similar it appears 
to the avian flu that has recently killed millions of birds, as well as 
some 60 people, in Asia. So far, the avian flu virus has jumped from 
birds to humans, but not from person to person. If that changes, this 
flu could be as deadly as -- or, given the speed of modern travel, more 
deadly than -- its predecessor. This is a potential disaster that, like 
the hurricane that devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, has long 
been anticipated. Also as with Hurricane Katrina, it is one for which 
the U.S. government is not prepared, as Mike Leavitt, the Health and 
Human Services secretary, acknowledged last week.

It's a good thing that Mr. Leavitt recognizes the problem. 
Unfortunately, it isn't clear that everyone in the administration 
understands it. It was disturbing to hear the president ruminate on the 
use of military troops for mass quarantines. That comment -- conjuring 
images of soldiers shooting as sick people try to cross a cordon 
sanitaire -- could have been a scare tactic. In fact, there is no legal, 
let alone ethical, means of enforcing mass quarantine in this country, 
and flu viruses, which don't always produce symptoms in the early 
stages, wouldn't obey them if there were.

So far the administration has concentrated on buying quantities of 
Tamiflu, an antiviral that looked as if it would be effective against 
avian flu but now, as the virus has mutated, might not be. There is also 
talk of U.S. help for surveillance teams in Asia, which is a good thing 
-- Mr. Leavitt is off to Asia this week -- but still insufficient, given 
the scant resources of the World Health Organization. Though many people 
assume otherwise, the WHO does not have thousands of employees who can 
be deployed to Asia on short notice, and it does not have vast 
stockpiles of Tamiflu or anything else.

The solution lies not in antivirals but in a vaccine that could be 
tailored, relatively quickly, to whatever form the virus takes, as well 
as help for U.S. hospitals, which are filled to capacity. The 
administration is aware of the former problem; the president met Friday 
with vaccine manufacturers, and the National Institutes of Health has 
been conducting vaccine research. But legislation is needed to 
facilitate research and rapid production of vaccines. That's a difficult 
task, given that American pharmaceutical companies, scared off by 
liability issues and low profits, no longer make vaccines at all.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/09/AR2005100900976.html?nav=hcmodule
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