11.07.2005

Avian flu vaccine?

Between all our bling-bling happiness this weekend, I had a chance to watch the CSPAN re-run of Michael Leavitt's testimony before the Senate appropriations committee last week regarding the possibility of a pandemic avian flu utbreak. While Leavitt surely sounded better in his role at HHS than he ever did at EPA (Michael, 'Leavitt-alone'), there were a couple of statements in his testimony that are almost Brownie-like without the narcissistic e-mails:

"The Administration has been aggressively working to be able to acquire, over a two-year period, enough H5N1 vaccine and antivirals to protect 20 million people should they become infected with the pandemic virus....This strategy was designed to give us considerable experience with commercial-scale manufacturing of this new vaccine, and provide some pre-pandemic vaccine to our stockpile....In addition to this limitation, since the submission of this Budget Amendment, we received results of H5N1vaccine clinical trials funded by NIH. As part of this strategy, the NIH has funded clinical trials of H5N1 influenza vaccine—which provided good news and, at the same time, sobering news. The good news was that the vaccine we developed works – it provides a good immune response that augurs well for protecting people against the H5N1 virus."

Forgive me if I missed this important news, but either we've already had widespread human-to-human transmission and tested a vaccine on a group of potentially exposed people, or that statement is a wee-bit inaccurate. Leavitt tended to repeat this peculiar phrasing a number of times during the testimony causing local news outlets to pick it up as well. Question is, why would he allow himself to say this in the presence of notables such as NIAID director Fauci? Is he just trying to make us all feel better?