Real-time science needed to stop new flu virus

Saturday May 30, 2009 (foodconsumer.org) -- The mishandling of the 1976 swine flu outbreak at Fort Dix, New Jersey, was marked by controversies, delays and a “progressive loss of credibility for public health authorities,” states an Institute of Medicine release.

Lessons learned from the Fort Dix disaster are already helping health authorities and policy makers in the current H1N1 flu crisis, writes IOM President Harvey Fineberg in a Science magazine article entitled “Epidemic Science in Real Time.”

When hundreds of soldiers were infected with the swine flu virus in 1976, a nationwide vaccination program was started and more than 40 million people were vaccinated.

The mass vaccination resulted more than 500 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a paralyzing nerve disease, according to the release. Thirty people died as a direct result of the vaccinations.

Fineberg writes about the reasons for the health disasters that arose from the mistakes made at Fort Dix.

“Decision makers failed to take seriously a key question: What additional information could lead to a different course of action? The answer is precisely what should drive a research agenda in real time today.”

If the current H1N1 flu rises to pandemic levels, wrote Fineberg, policy makers will want real-time answers in areas where science can help. Those areas include pandemic risk, vulnerable populations and public understanding.

Time is of the essence when dealing with the spread of an unknown virus, and scientists in the H1N1 flu crisis have acted swiftly, wrote Fineberg.

“In the current H1N1 influenza outbreak, the causative virus and its genetic sequence were identified in a matter of days,” he writes. “Within a couple of weeks, an international consortium of investigators developed preliminary assessments of cases and mortality based on epidemic modeling.”

Because the H1N1 flu virus is capable of mutating or acquiring new genetic material, he says, estimates of its “pandemic potential” will benefit from tracking patterns in the field and viral mutations in the laboratory.

Fineberg also said it is important when dealing with the public to avoid both over-reaction and under-reaction.

(By Sheilah Downey, and edited by Heather Kelley)