Citing White House sources, The New York Times reports that representatives of Chiron, Sanofi-Aventis, Wyeth, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck have been invited to a meeting in the White House tomorrow to discuss a response to a potential flu pandemic. Other news reports indicate that President Bush will press them to find ways to mass-produce vaccines to guard against an outbreak of a mutated H5N1 virus. That could be a tricky proposition, though. Researchers say that the virus would have to mutate into an infectious disease before they could come up with a specific, targeted response. Meanwhile, the US has been stockpiling the antiviral Tamiflu, which has demonstrated an ability to ward off the disease.
That information is part of a wider story about new research into an 87-year-old bird flu virus. By studying samples from the preserved tissues of two soldiers and an Alaskan woman buried in frozen ground, researchers have determined that the Spanish flu epidemic that killed some 50 million people worldwide in 1918 was bird flu that spread to humans. Scientists at a CDC lab in Atlanta synthesized the virus and used it to infect mice so that it could be studied. They determined that small genetic changes made the virus particularly lethal. Their work could have a major impact on the feverish work going on to defend against a new onslaught of bird flu that could be even more lethal than the killer of 1918.
- read this article in The New York Times for more