"Bird Flu Won't Wait"

In today's New York Times, Dartmouth Medical School professor Kendall Hoyt argues for a fundamental rethinking of the way vaccine development is structured as part of public health preparations for emerging biological threats, such as SARS and avian flu...

"[The current system] is less sensible, however, for many other threats, for two reasons. First, the number of pathogenic threats far outstrips our drug development resources. Second, epidemiological forecasting and intelligence about such threats are unreliable: witness the vaccination campaigns against botulinum toxin in World War II, swine flu in 1976, anthrax in the 1991 gulf war and smallpox before the Iraq war, which all addressed threats that failed to materialize. Creating stockpiles of vaccines for high-consequence pathogens is important. Beyond those, however, it's wiser to build a system that will allow us to react quickly to rapidly evolving or unexpected biological threats."

His suggestion: a 'bug to drug' program that could more easily adapt to the presence of new pathogens, creating new vaccines more quickly and ensuring adequate production capacity if/when needed.