Avian flu has been spreading slowly for more than two years now, but this year marked its elevation to above-the-fold headline treatment after President Bush started talking about using troops to enforce any possible quarantines that might be needed to contain a human outbreak of the disease. Since then, practically every new day has brought a fresh raft of news on the subject, and much of it shows the drug development world at its best. Only days ago, Sanofi-Pasteur disclosed that it believed it had developed an important new procedure for enhancing the effectiveness of flu vaccines.
The global spread of avian flu has helped drive big changes in the long-moribund world of vaccines. New manufacturing methods aimed at speeding production are being introduced at a time the industry is undergoing a new round of consolidation. Low margins had made vaccines a bad bet for the shareholder-value proposition that underlies our system of business. Now billions of dollars in new government contracts and a sense of urgency to combat nightmare diseases have helped electrify the field. This year marks a watershed in the vaccine business that will long be remembered.