Why We Cannot Depend on a Vaccine to Save Us From Bird Flu
5123
Disease & Illness > Bird Flu
Mar 1, 2007
Richard Stooker
Why We Cannot Depend on a Vaccine to Save Us From Bird Flu
With current vaccine technology a vaccine cannot save us from a pandemic of contagious bird flu.
Although criticized as fearmongering, the ABC made for TV movie First Contact: Bird Flu in America was overly optimistic. Neither us nor the French nor anybody else is going to development and manufacture a vaccine within two months using the technology of the past 50 years.
First, work on a highly targeted vaccine against a specific strain of contagious bird flu cannot even begin until that specific strain of bird flu comes into existence.
Researchers are working on vaccines against current strains of H5N1, and these may have some effect on curbing a contagious strain, because they'd be similar, but not the same.
After getting samples of the contagious form of H5N1, the virus makers begin creating the vaccine from dead viruses. It must be tested for safety and approved for use in humans. This takes time.
After the vaccine is ready, doses of it must be produced. Each dose of the vaccine is grown inside one egg.
The entire process takes 6 to 8 months to produce ordinary winter flu shots. And we know from 2004 that sometimes batches of vaccine are contaminated, and there's a shortage of the ordinary flu vaccine.
Bird flu will create other problems. It's believed that people will need two doses of a vaccine against it for full protection. Therefore, to vaccinate everyone in the United States will require 600 million eggs.
Where will all those eggs come from? The world is destroying chickens by the millions now, to control the spread of H5N1 in the chickens. It could take months to come up with enough eggs to grow the vaccine doses in sufficient quantity to stop the spread of the pandemic just in the United States.
And of course the rest of the world will also be clamoring for the vaccine, and overseas companies will also be manufacturing it, using up all the eggs they have available.
Therefore, Health and Human Services head Michael Leavitt has said it would be six months before an effective and precisely target bird flu vaccine would be ready after the pandemic began.
And remember that the 1918 flu spread throughout the world and killed from 20 to 100 million people in the days before jets connected countries and four-lane highways connected cities within countries. People travel much more and much farther and much more quickly now than in 1918.
And yet the worst of the 1918 flu happened in just three months.
And remember also that H5N1 will remain a virus that mutates quickly. After it becomes highly contagious, it will not stop mutating.
By the time we've designed and approved a vaccine against the original contagious form of the virus, there'll be slightly different strains infecting people.
Six months later, the H5N1 virus will be much different than it was at the beginning of the pandemic.
Producing and distributing to millions of frightened people a vaccine that's precisely targeted toward the virus killing people right now is like shooting at a moving target.
Only we cannot guess where the target is going to go to next.
And it's moving faster than we can re-aim.
Although criticized as fearmongering, the ABC made for TV movie First Contact: Bird Flu in America was overly optimistic. Neither us nor the French nor anybody else is going to development and manufacture a vaccine within two months using the technology of the past 50 years.
First, work on a highly targeted vaccine against a specific strain of contagious bird flu cannot even begin until that specific strain of bird flu comes into existence.
Researchers are working on vaccines against current strains of H5N1, and these may have some effect on curbing a contagious strain, because they'd be similar, but not the same.
After getting samples of the contagious form of H5N1, the virus makers begin creating the vaccine from dead viruses. It must be tested for safety and approved for use in humans. This takes time.
After the vaccine is ready, doses of it must be produced. Each dose of the vaccine is grown inside one egg.
The entire process takes 6 to 8 months to produce ordinary winter flu shots. And we know from 2004 that sometimes batches of vaccine are contaminated, and there's a shortage of the ordinary flu vaccine.
Bird flu will create other problems. It's believed that people will need two doses of a vaccine against it for full protection. Therefore, to vaccinate everyone in the United States will require 600 million eggs.
Where will all those eggs come from? The world is destroying chickens by the millions now, to control the spread of H5N1 in the chickens. It could take months to come up with enough eggs to grow the vaccine doses in sufficient quantity to stop the spread of the pandemic just in the United States.
And of course the rest of the world will also be clamoring for the vaccine, and overseas companies will also be manufacturing it, using up all the eggs they have available.
Therefore, Health and Human Services head Michael Leavitt has said it would be six months before an effective and precisely target bird flu vaccine would be ready after the pandemic began.
And remember that the 1918 flu spread throughout the world and killed from 20 to 100 million people in the days before jets connected countries and four-lane highways connected cities within countries. People travel much more and much farther and much more quickly now than in 1918.
And yet the worst of the 1918 flu happened in just three months.
And remember also that H5N1 will remain a virus that mutates quickly. After it becomes highly contagious, it will not stop mutating.
By the time we've designed and approved a vaccine against the original contagious form of the virus, there'll be slightly different strains infecting people.
Six months later, the H5N1 virus will be much different than it was at the beginning of the pandemic.
Producing and distributing to millions of frightened people a vaccine that's precisely targeted toward the virus killing people right now is like shooting at a moving target.
Only we cannot guess where the target is going to go to next.
And it's moving faster than we can re-aim.
Article Source: http://www.articlerich.com
c 2006 by Richard Stooker Richard Stooker is the author of How to Protect Yourself and Your Family From Bird Flu and Bird Flu Blog
Write a Review
Add to My Favorite
Refer it to Friend
Report Article
Other links owned by this user
If you want to trust you and your family's health to the government -- you deserve what happens to you. The United States Homeland Security Council in early May 2006 released a 233 page report called the Strategy for Pandemic Influenza
Category:
For years, world class chess players have prepared for important tournaments by exercising. But few chess players do so in an optimum way. Serious chess players are certainly very intellectual, and not inclined to keep up a regular regimen
Category:
Several months ago, a cat in Germany caught bird flu -- and pet owners throughout Europe dumped ir poor dogs and cats. I trust you have more concern for animals under your care than that, and re are ways to reduce risk that
Category:
Although the famous Man Versus Machine matches of Garry Kasparov against IBM's Deep Blue superr and the upcoming match of Vladimir Kramnik against Deep Fritz coming November 25, 2006 get the media attention, this article is more about how
Category:
Your ain needs oxygen -- and lots of it. Your ain uses up 20% of all the oxygen you eathe in. To play your best game of chess, you need lots of oxygen freely flowing to your ain. 40% of your body's energy is burned in your
Category:
Not long ago, I read an article about alternative health where someone with a serious disease was counseled to look upon it as a "blessing." Your first reaction is probably the same as mine was -- what a stupid idea! How can cancer or
Category:
How can you know whether your or a loved one ha bird flu or jut a cae of ordinary flu? That' not a imple quetion to anwer. Frankly, the only 100% way i to have body ecretion teted by a World Health Organization (WHO) laboratory
Category:
There's a new and so far lile-known way o cach bird flu. By waer. One major oubreak of bird flu among wild birds occurred in he middle of 2005 around Qinghai Lake, in China. Recenly, wild birds in ha area have again
Category:
The bird flu virus can be compared to a monkey with a typewriter. And that's why it's getting more and more dangerous. You may have heard the old observation that if you give enough monkeys a keyboard, eventually one will -- just by
Category:
Bobby Fischer ate meat, cheese, hardboiled eggs and herring. Drank ice water, tomato juice and cola. Boris Spassky ate sandwiches and drank coffee and orange juice. Therefore, during their epic World Championship Chess
Category:
Your prospect is actively hiding from you. One of the biggest mistakes you can make when choosing a copywriter is to hire one the same way you'd pick a champion archer. In archery, you should look for the bowman with the
Category:
Yes, sure chess is good for developing he abiliy o hink, o reason, o ponder, o calculae and analyze. Sure i develops he abiliy o read and remember. To look and hink ahead, o carefully reason ou and foresee he consequences of acions and
Category:
Why? During a bird pandemic you d remain as isolated from everybody outside your family as possible. Therefore, you d shop only for necessities: food, water, fuel and medicine. Where? Therefore, you
Category:
Chess is a game of substitute war, so you will win more chess games by taking advantage of the ancient wisdom distilled from the art of military strategies. This includes a collection of strategies compiled in China at least 1,500 years
Category:
Hang a sign around your neck saying, "Kick Me" -- and someone will. Report to a job interview with scared eyes, a nervous voice and shoulders slumped with resignation -- and you're forcing the interviewer to reject
Category:
Here's a frightening fact regarding chess players: You know much more than you think -- yet you use far less than you know. What if you could play a game of chess using EVERYTHING you've ever learned? How many chess books
Category:
You see a lot of wild and crazy ates for this. Yet, the truth is, there's no simple answer. It depends on a lot of things -- and the most important factors are still unknown. First of all, I don't put any stock in the simplistic
Category:
The only real hope to stop future influenza pandemics such as we're now facing from bird flu, is to develop a "universal" flu vaccine that innoculates us against all influenza viruses. This would also eliminate the habit of giving people
Category:
If nothing else, the bird flu scare should remind us not to take our immune systems for granted. According to U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Michael Leavitt, it'll take 6 months after a contagious strain of bird flu is
Category:
Somewhere in Southeast Asia (or Africa, the MidEast, Europe etc) . . . A hen clucks and shifts around in her perch. She sniffs and sneezes. Inside the lining of her respiratory tract and lungs, millions of influenza viruses
Category:
Other links at Disease & Illness > Bird Flu
The bird flu virus can be compared to a monkey with a typewriter. And that's why it's getting more and more dangerous. You may have heard the old observation that if you give enough monkeys a keyboard, eventually one will -- just by
Category:
?Who let the birds out?? Though th song not yet popular among people, if not careful, in due course, everyone will be singing it in unon. In other words, the bird flu spreading fast, and not enough
Category:
Is the world today looking at another pandemic due to the avian influenza virus? The increasing cases of the avian influenza virus, the global spreading of the disease and the fact that many scientists believe that it is not a matter of if but when we
Category:
Bird Flu or more correctly, avian flu, is much in the news and causing a lot of anxiety. Many people are worried that they may get it, and the papers are full of horror scenarios. There are over 100 strains of avian flu, but most of them
Category:
If nothing else, the bird flu scare should remind us not to take our immune systems for granted. According to U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Michael Leavitt, it'll take 6 months after a contagious strain of bird flu is
Category:
Site Sponsor
Directory Statistics
Articles: 68214
Categories: 501
Yahoo Entertainment
