Tuesday, November 1, 2005

Tamiflu or Jesus and Tequila? Since this influenza rhubarb is still with us More bird flu in Russia, UN says keep focus on Asia, it seems it might be worthwhile to read through some of the articles that are popping up on this, rather than just graze the headlines like I normally do. It's not just print media but radio Bush decides to be prepared for bird flu(marketplace) and tv as well. Columnist Anne Applebaum in a piece last week Silver Flu Bullets puts it down to the President's reading a book and being compelled to action by it. "As far as I can ascertain, much of this happened because the president and his Cabinet colleague had recently read John Barry's excellent book "The Great Influenza," on the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. But while there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the president reading books (it's possibly a better use of presidential time than mountain biking), a week's worth of publicity doesn't substitute for many years of sustained collaboration between the government, the pharmaceutical industry and the rest of the research community." The message that comes parallel and packaged in various article that while experts and policy leaders judge that an influenza pandemic will probably not occur this year or next year, eventually it will. They are not crying wolf so much as trying to put an infrastucture in place to deal with it. Applebaum's main point in her column is that we need to get beyond the short term and tamiflu solutions. We have to change our attitude toward the pharmacuetical industry let them have the motavation and freedom of action they need to sort out how they will solve this problem. And not encourage political leaders to hamstring them by playing to our prejudices. Also we need to avoid changing our attitude about science, natural selction and genetics. This reminded me that its problematic to talk about viruses jumping from one species to another or possessing abilities to do things. Viruses do not learn or demonstrate skill. It takes some understanding just to talk about the problem and not create unhelpful misconceptions. President Bush meanwhile is holding press conferences to announce new initiatives on this issue: Bush Calls for $7.1 Billion to Prepare for Bird Flu Threat, and similarly in the Washington Post Bush Outlines $7.1 Billion in Flu Preparations . It's not a lot of money but still, its a sacrifice of his time and attention from other pressing things. I'm sure he would rather have held that press conference to answer questions about the White House Iraqi group and its role in the war, or the decision making partnership between the executive and certain magazine and newspaper columnists. On an completely unrelated note Donald Rumsfeld owns stock in Gilead Sciences inc. the bio-pharm co. that owns the patent to Tamilflu Rumsfeld to Avoid Bird-Flu Drug Issues - New York Times . He was Gilead's chairman before coming to his current job. Small world. 11:43:59 PM    comment [];trackback [];

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. 2005 Paul Bushmiller. Last update: 11/9/05; 2:07:58 AM.