avian influenza strain H5N1 appears in gold, growing in a laboratory culture of dog kidney cells (green). Photo courtesy of the CDC Public Health Image Library

Today's most worrisome medical news involves avian flu, a particularly-virulent strain of influenza that has made the leap from wild fowl to domestic ones in Asia and from them to a number of humans, most of whom it kills. An unprepared world may now be facing the threat of a deadly pandemic even greater than the one that killed tens of millions of people in the aftermath of World War I.

Last year, Etopia Media Medical News Network ran four detailed articles on the subject of avian flu. You can access them now at the links below.

10-11-04: Could the bird flu virus H5N1 cause a 1918-class global influenza pandemic?

10-12-04: De-certified regular flu maker Chiron got a contract with federal agency to make and test H5N1 (bird flu) virus as part of the national response to a possible global avian influenza pandemic and hasn't said if its decertification will interfere with carrying it out

10-31-04: U.N. plans avian influenza summit in Geneva for November 11th, while U.S. hires trouble-plagued Chiron to cook up test vaccines against deadly avian influenza pandemic

11-3-04: Dr. Dominick Iacuzio, Medical Director at Roche Pharmaceuticals, explains how anti-virals such as Tamiflu® work and how they can provide a more reliable defense against a possible avian influenza pandemic than a strategy relying on vaccination

The last of these four articles, the interview with Dr. Dominick Iacuzio, Medical Director of Roche Pharmaceuticals, is particularly noteworthy in that Tamiflu®, which he discusses in great detail, holds the promise of delivering a viable defense against avian flu in ways that the world's inadequate system for the production and deployment of anti-avian flu vaccine does not.