Defending humankind against a potentially catastrophic avian influenza ("bird flu") pandemic is an expensive, complicated, time-consuming, and tricky proposition, involving a range of factors including the pre-ordering of millions of sterile, fertile chicken eggs (more difficult when millions of chickens are being "culled" to stop the spread of the H5N1 virus); providing liability insurance for vaccine makers; mobilizing, empowering, and funding government efforts to order and pay for the vaccine; convincing potential victims of the need to be vaccinated; handling the logistics of that effort; and, not least, designing and producing (within existing or future regulatory constraints) a vaccine that will be effective against the particular strain (or strains) of influenza virus that eventually end up carrying the potentially pandemic disease.
what mainstream MSNBC-Newsweek says about how the vaccine development effort is going
MSNBC-Newsweek, with a large online audience, in its October 17, 2005, issue, in an article entitled
"The Race Against Avian Flu," wrote that:
"Researchers have developed a promising vaccine that is now beginning large-scale production…. 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."
another source of vaccine
According to the press release from
Chiron Corporation linked to above through the word "expensive," the U.S. Government has also entered into "a
$62.5 million contract to supply the U.S. government with pre-pandemic influenza vaccine for a stockpile to protect against the H5N1 avian influenza virus strain."
remaining uncertainties
Still unclear at this point is whether these orders will merely serve to get production facilities capable of producing sufficient quantities of appropriate vaccine against avian influenza up and running or whether the vaccine produced under these deals will actually work against whatever form of virus (or viruses) the potentially catastrophic bird flu finally (or transitionally) takes.
Also undetermined (and presumably part of what will be investigated under these arrangements) is the minimal number and size of doses of the vaccine that will be required to confer adequate immunity on those given the vaccine, and what "adjuvants," or "vaccine efficiency enhancers" will need to be used in conjunction with the vaccine itself in order to give the vaccinated sufficient immunity to protect them against avian influenza and/or to extend the amount of available vaccine sufficiently to provide it to enough additional recipients to head off the spread of the possible pandemic.
what the more obscure recombinomics web site says about prospects for developing an effective vaccine against avian influenza
Recent reports on the
recombinomics web site, a publication with far fewer readers than
MSNBC-Newsweek, paint a picture much less reassuring than what many readers may infer from the larger site's report that "researchers have developed a promising vaccine that is now beginning large-scale production."
According to the August 5, 2005 "Recombinomics Commentary" entitled
"H5N1 Bird Flu Evolves Away From Pandemic Vaccine" on the
recombinomics web site:
"The rapid spread of H5N1 across Asia and the expected spread through Europe dictate that a new pandemic vaccine effort be initiated, because it seems likely that the current vaccine will offer little protection to emerging recombinants in the upcoming months."
In another "Recombinomics Commentary" three days later, on August 8, 2005, entitled
US Considers a Third H5N1 Bird Flu Pandemic Vaccine Dose," the author writes:
"both pandemic vaccine and H5N1 anti-viral data indicate significantly more work is required and the existing treatments will do little to blunt a raging pandemic.
"As H5N1 approaches
Europe and the summering migratory birds in northern China and southern Russia prepare to head south to recombine with endemic H5N1 in areas like southeast Asia and probably China and India, there is considerable cause for concern."
let's not count our avian influenza vaccine defenses before they're hatched
Before anyone stops worrying about a global avian influenza pandemic because
MSNBC-Newsweek is telling its large audience that "researchers have developed a promising vaccine that is now beginning large-scale production," it might be prudent to give thorough and thoughtful consideration to the details of the situation referenced in the much-smaller circulation web site containing these, and other,
"Recombinant Commentaries."
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