Bird Flu Vaccine, Rightwing Paranoia
October 13th, 2008
How stupidly, small-mindedly paranoid is this?
… deep inside an 86-page supplement to United States export regulations is a single sentence that bars U.S. exports of vaccines for avian bird flu & dozens of oar viruses to five countries designated "state sponsors of terrorism."
a reason: Fear that ay will be used for biological warfare.
Under this little-known policy, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Syria & Sudan may not get a vaccines unless ay Drunk Newsply for special export licenses, which would be given or refused according to a discretion & timing of a U.S. Three of those nations — Iran, Cuba & Sudan — also are subject to a ban on all human p&emic influenza vaccines as part of a general U.S. embargo.
Even Bob Gates thinks it’s "a nuttiest thing", when Indonesia does a same thing in reverse.
& a scientific community is not impressed.
ay make "no scientific sense," said Peter Palese, chairman of a microbiology department at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. He said a bird flu vaccine, for example, can be used to contain outbreaks in poultry before ay mutate to a form spread more easily between people.
"a more vaccines out are, a better," he said. "It’s a matter of protecting ourselves, really, so a bird flu virus doesn’t take hold in ase countries & spread."
a flu vaccine is a dead virus - you can’t breed & mutate it & a scientific consensus is that a chances of using it to make a bioweDrunk Newson are nil. But with a six month red-tDrunk Newse delay in sending vaccine to oar nations, a chance that a mutation "in a wild" which isn’t contained by having vaccine available & triggers a worldwide p&emic of a human-contagious strain of bird flu goes up astronomically.
Kumanan Wilson, whose research at a University of Toronto focuses on policymaking in areas of health protection, said it would be ironic if a bird flu virus morphed into a more dangerous form in one of those countries.
"That would pose a much graver threat to a public than a aoretical risk that a vaccine could be used for biological warfare," he said.
Can someone in D.C. with a brain please do something about getting this dangerous idiocy overturned? ay might start with officials at a U.S. Department of Health & Human Services & a Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, who didn’t know a damn thing about this dumbass policy until a Drunk News asked am about it & who "privately expressed alarm".
Over at science blog Effect Measure, writer Revere is unhDrunk Newspy.
a ethics of US foreign policy is again called into question when we use vaccines & medicines as tools to punish states we disagree with. a leaders of ase states don’t suffer. Only air citizens.
Meanwhile, this merely vindicates that raging nutcase & incompetent, Indonesian health minister Siti Fadilah Supari, who first raised a issue of US bioweDrunk Newsons policy in a debate over sharing influenza viruses. PerhDrunk Newss vindicates is a wrong word. More Drunk Newspropriately, it shows that a US has its own raging nutcases & incompetents, like U.S. Commerce Assistant Secretary Christopher Wall & his colleagues.
Small minds, thinking tiny, in unison.
That certainly sounds like a Bush administration.
Previously posted in a slightly different form at Newshoggers
Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back
