Avian Flu Update V
Drugs and Money appear to be the topic now.
I have previously referenced Derek Lowe’s In The Pipeline on topics pharmaceutical (including the supposed link between vaccines and autism). His blog is in my RSS (built in, by the way, with Safari RSS) list, and should be in yours also if you find the pharmaceutical industry at all interesting.
Derek has also been tracking the Avian Flu from the perspective of how pharmaceutical companies are reacting (or not) to it.
His latest thoughts explore whether there is money to be made with the impending doom of a pandemic.
So, no one knows how likely a pandemic is, when it might occur, and how it might behave. It’s prudent to take a look at marginal compounds like peramivir, whose possible use against avian flu was being spoken about years ago. But it’s not prudent to buy, or urge others to buy Biocryst’s stock after it’s already tripled in price.
H5N1 looks to be a tough nut to crack and Derek addresses the concern that antivirals are gathering dust:
Tamiflu and Relenza were supposed to be much more successful than they’ve turned out to be. I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago in the context of a Canadian effort to develop new antivirals. The Canadians make an appearance in at least one article on Biocryst, from the New York Times, which also talks about the unhappiness of the smaller companies (Gilead, Biota) that first discovered Tamiflu and Relenza. . . .
My biggest beef is that our culture of suing has prevented pharmaceuticals from producing much needed drugs of all types, not just antivirals, but if a pandemic hits, the joke could be that (personal injury) lawyers are the last to get any existing antiviral treatments.
But, I digress. . . .
HN51 is now confirmed to be in mainland Europe.
And to come full circle on the subject of terror and death, Charles Krauthammer worries that our recent ability to recreate the Spanish Flu virus may be a gift to our enemies.
. . . It was announced last week that U.S. scientists have just created a living, killing copy of the 1918 “Spanish” flu.
This is big. Very big.
First, it is a scientific achievement of staggering proportions. The Spanish flu has not been seen on this blue planet for 85 years. Its re-creation is a story of enterprise, ingenuity, serendipity, hard work and sheer brilliance. . . .
Which brings us to the second element of this story: Beyond the brilliance lies the sheer terror. We have brought back to life an agent of near-biblical destruction. It killed more people in six months than were killed in the four years of World War I. It killed more humans than any other disease of similar duration in the history of the world, says Alfred W. Crosby, who wrote a history of the 1918 pandemic. And, notes New Scientist magazine, when the re-created virus was given to mice in heavily quarantined laboratories in Atlanta, it killed the mice more quickly than any other flu virus ever tested.
It is easy to see how terrorists could walk across our borders with martyrs infected with H5N1.
We all should pray that those in positions of protecting us from both terror and pandemics are wise, very wise.
More Recent Updates:
Previous Updates:
Avian Flu Update IV
Avian Flu Update III
Avian Flu Update II
Avian Flu Update
Avian Bird Flu Pandemic