Flu!

InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds offers his take on the avian flu, currently worrying Turkey. (Oh, irony!)

Avian flu will either mutate so that it can spread easily among humans, or it won't. If it does, it might possibly also mutate in a way that makes it less fatal, or it might not. The result could be a dreadful epidemic that will kill millions, or just a new strain of flu. At the moment, no one can really say which is more likely, and those claiming otherwise are likely, um, overenthusiastic about their state of knowledge.

Pure common sense, that. Indeed, my own hunch is that the next flu pandemic will erupt from some other reservoir while we're keeping an eagle eye on the avian strain.

Now, the problem is, wherever the flu comes from, we're not ready.

The vaccine now under development, based on the flu strain that killed people in Vietnam, might not work against a mutated strain. And even if it does, the vaccine has a shelf-life of only about a year, making it hard to maintain a stockpile against the day that the flu goes global. We can stockpile antiviral drugs like Tamiflu or Relenza, though their effectiveness against avian flu isn't certain either. There are some reports of avian flu resistance to Tamiflu, though others pooh-pooh them.

One recommendation: Streamline the development process.

As Ray Kurzweil noted in testimony to Congress:

As we compare the success we have had in controlling engineered software viruses to the coming challenge of controlling engineered biological viruses, we are struck with one salient difference. As I noted above, the software industry is almost completely unregulated. The same is obviously not the case for biotechnology. A bioterrorist does not need to put his ‘innovations’ through the FDA. However, we do require the scientists developing the defensive technologies to follow the existing regulations, which slow down the innovation process at every step. Moreover, it is impossible, under existing regulations and ethical standards, to test defenses to bioterrorist agents. There is already extensive discussion to modify these regulations to allow for animal models and simulations to replace infeasible human trials. This will be necessary, but I believe we will need to go beyond these steps to accelerate the development of vitally needed defensive technologies. …