Re: Update on "Avian flu preparations, the US and Europe"

Sure evleth go ahead this is your life, after all !

"Earl Evleth" <evleth@xxxxxxxxxx> a écrit dans le message de news:
BF6E929C.7CDC3%evleth@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> On 8/10/05 22:00, in article 4348255a$0$5397$8fcfb975@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
> "Runge" <philsa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Updating you further, Grunge.
>
> Have a nice day.
>
> ****
>
>
> The Race Against Avian Flu
>
> Public-health officials have been sounding the alarms, and now Washington
> has caught the bug. Meanwhile, scientists search for a vaccine.
>
>
>
>
> By Jerry Adler and Anne Underwood
> Newsweek
>
> Oct. 17, 2005 issue - In the calendar of natural calamities, flu season
> follows hurricane season, peaking in midwinter. Last week, with New
> Orleans
> still mostly uninhabitable, Washington was turning its attention to the
> threat posed by an exceptionally lethal strain of flu virus that could, in
> the worst case, kill as many people in a few months as AIDS has done in
> two
> decades. This time officials were resolved not to repeat the mistakes of
> Katrina, leaving the way open to make new mistakes. We now know better how
> to evacuate large cities > calls for a quarantine instead?
>
> At least no one could accuse the government of downplaying the threat:
> President Bush himself raised the possibility of using the military to
> contain a flu outbreak, while the Senate voted to spend $4 billion on
> preparations. Researchers have developed a promising vaccine that is now
> beginning large-scale production. But new fears arose last week when
> scientists announced they had reconstructed an actual living copy of the
> "Spanish flu" virus that killed 20 million to 50 million people in 1918.
> Apart from the implication that a terrorist could do the same thing, the
> disturbing news was that the culprit was essentially a bird virus which
> had
> undergone only "minimal changes to infect humans directly," according to
> microbiologist Terrence Tumpey of the Centers for Disease Control and
> Prevention. (More common, and less lethal, flu outbreaks are caused by
> germs
> that are a hybrid of mammalian and avian viruses.) As Tumpey points out,
> that is also a pretty accurate description of the H5N1 flu virus that has
> been circulating in Asia since 1997. (It is not related to the SARS
> outbreak
> of 2003.) In the last two years H5N1 has killed 140 million birds; it has
> infected just 116 people, mostly in Vietnam > half of them. The critical
> difference from 1918 is that the newer virus is
> not ordinarily contagious between people. Almost everyone who has come
> down
> with it has caught it from a bird. So far.
>
> Most researchers think our luck won't hold > viruses at loose in the world
> replicate and mutate, it's only a matter of
> time before one evolves the ability to spread by way of a cough or a
> handshake. Then our fate will be decided in a race between the virus's
> inherent lethality and the tendency of all germs to evolve toward a less
> deadly form because their own spread depends on not killing the host >
> quickly. Some researchers like our odds. In 1918, millions of soldiers and
> civilian refugees on the move in crammed trains and ships created an ideal
> situation for spreading flu, and there was nothing like today's techniques
> for surveillance and isolation of patients. "I actually have confidence
> about this," says Paul Ewald, a biologist at the University of Louisville.
> "It won't race around the world like a new 1918 virus."
>
>
> We also have medical resources undreamed of in 1918. Last year molecular
> virologist Richard Webby of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in
> Mem-phis, Tenn., announced he had "reverse engineered" a version of the
> H5N1
> virus that could be the basis for a vaccine, keeping the parts that are
> recognized by the human immune system while disabling a critical
> disease-causing function. It took just "a few weeks," says Linda Lambert,
> who is coordinating the government's bird-flu-vaccine program. The
> resulting
> vaccine has been tested on 450 volunteers, and preliminary results are
> promising, at least for the highest doses tested; like many vaccines, it
> will probably have to be given in two shots, a month apart. On the
> assumption it will work, but also in part just to get a production line up
> and running, the government last month awarded a $100 million contract to
> Sanofi Pasteur of France, aiming for a stockpile of 20 million doses. The
> vaccine is tricky to manufacture, because it requires injecting virus into
> live chicken eggs; under a separate contract, the same company is
> researching a cell-based production sys-tem that could show results by the
> end of the decade.
>
> The second line of defense against avian flu is antiviral drugs, in
> particular one called Tamiflu from the Swiss drugmaker Roche. Viruses
> replicate by commandeering a cell's genetic machinery to copy themselves;
> Tamiflu prevents the daughter viruses from escaping to infect new cells.
> It
> has shown good results against H5N1 in cell cultures and in mice, and it
> works against milder forms of the flu in humans, if they take it the first
> day or two after falling ill. But the real test will come only when and if
> a
> lot more people are infected with H5N1; one expert in infectious disease,
> Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota, admits that "we don't
> honestly know" if Tamiflu will work against avian flu, adding: "The
> disease
> goes so quickly to high levels of infection, you might need to take it
> before you get exposed."
>
> But as of last week the United States had enough Tamiflu to treat only 2.3
> million cases, with 2 million more about to be delivered and a further 8
> million on order. Government plans call for a stockpile adequate to treat
> 20
> million people with antivirals. Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the
> National
> Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, says the
> government
> was too slow to order it. Much of Roche's production is now committed to
> other countries that placed orders earlier. Redlener estimates that it
> could
> take until 2008 before production can catch up with worldwide demand for
> the
> drug. "We're playing Russian roulette with public health here," he says.
>
> Of course, that's just what the administration doesn't want anyone to
> think,
> which explains the flurry of activity last week. That included briefings
> for
> congressional leaders under a top-secret security classification
> ordinarily
> used only for highly sensitive foreign intelligence; a source familiar
> with
> the issue who requested anonymity in discussing intelligence matters
> speculated that the briefings included information about human cases in
> foreign countries. The week culminated with a conference of health
> officials
> from 80 foreign countries and a well-publicized meeting in which Bush
> urged
> drug-company executives to speed their work on vaccines. Secretary of
> Health
> and Human Services Michael Leavitt says Bush brought up avian flu with him
> at a meeting earlier this year, and that "we've been in an aggressive mode
> of planning for at least six months. Any suggestion the president hasn't
> been fully engaged on this pre-Katrina would be wrong." Whether he did
> enough, we may find out this winter, or next. Or, if we're lucky, not at
> all.
>
> With Mark Hosenball, Martha Brant and Pat Wingert in Washington
>


.

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