Editorial: Planning brings protection

Sunday, Oct. 9, 2005 | 10:45 a.m.

Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt is traveling to Southeast Asia this week to confer with officials in countries battling avian influenza, commonly known as bird flu. His trip took on a certain urgency last week with the publication of studies conducted by teams of government and university research scientists.

The studies showed that the influenza virus that killed 50 million people worldwide in 1918 and 1919 started out as bird flu. The pandemic happened when the bird-flu virus stopped killing just birds. The virus adapted so that it also killed people, and made them highly infectious for several days before they died.

For the past eight years 11 countries in Southeast Asia have been experiencing outbreaks of bird flu. More than 60 people who have come in contact with infected birds have died, but they did not become infectious. The scientists say their findings show that this virus, though, could possibly, at some point, transform itself into the 1918 form. If this happens, the virus could spread from one person to others, including travelers, and begin another global outbreak.

The scientists, including those from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C., and Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, spent 10 years studying the original virus, which they found in tissue samples preserved from three victims of the pandemic. The virus was actually re-created in a secure CDC lab. It was found that with just a few mutations, which are highly possible, the current bird flu virus could become as deadly as the one 87 years ago.

The value of the scientists' work is multifold. It can help scientists studying the current virus identify any mutations that could indicate the potential for pandemic. It can help drug companies prepare vaccines that will protect people from the mutated genes shown to be the most lethal. And it serves as a warning to President Bush and Congress that existing fears about the Asian bird flu are amply warranted.

The increased level of concern was apparent last week when Bush addressed the possibility of a pandemic at a news conference and talked of possible plans for using federal troops to enforce the mass quarantine of infected people. We agree with Leavitt, who said last week that producing strong anti-viral vaccines at plants in the United States should become a top priority. With the exception of a plant in Pennsylvania that produces vaccines for common flus, there are no U.S.-based manufacturers.

The chances of another pandemic are high enough for the Bush administration, Congress and the states to be making emergency plans and sharing them in a nonalarmist way with the American public. People today have more immunity to flus and with plans in place a pandemic need not happen.