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Biosafety Committees (IBCs), composed of local scientists and officials. Critics say these are free
to interpret the official guidelines in a way that suits them.
“There is no effective national system to ensure consistency, responsibility and good judgement in
such research,” says Edward Hammond of the Sunshine Project, a biosecurity pressure group in
Austin, Texas. In a review of IBCs published this month, he found that many would not provide
minutes of recent meetings as required by law.

He says the IBC that approved the planned 1918 flu study at the University of Washington
considered only one scenario that could result in workers being exposed to airborne virus – the
dropping of samples. Its solution: lab workers “will be trained to stop breathing”.

Bird flu vaccination could lead to new strains

* 19:00 24 March 2004 by Debora MacKenzie

Vaccinating chickens may be the only way out of the bird flu nightmare in Asia. But it could also
lead to the evolution of new strains, the latest research shows, increasing the risk of a human
pandemic.

Only intensive surveillance can stop this happening, but experts say the countries affected do not
have the necessary systems in place.

Last week China declared its bird flu outbreaks had ended. Health officials are vaccinating
millions of the birds that escaped slaughter. Indonesia is also vaccinating, and other Asian
countries hit by the H5N1 bird flu are considering the same strategy.

But the H5N1 virus is almost certainly still circulating among the vaccinated birds, and the fear is
that in this abnormal setting it may evolve into a form that is not only fatal to people, like the
current one, but can also spread from person to person.

XVIII. Precedents: the abandoned swine flu mass vaccination program of 1976

In 1976, a mild swine flu swept through the United States. President Gerald Ford mandated a
mass vaccination programme -- which was carried out by the same vaccine companies as today --
that had to be abandoned because of the catastrophic results.

President Ford was acting on the advice of medical experts, who believed they were dealing with
a virus potentially as deadly as the one that caused the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic.

The virus surfaced in February 1976 at Fort Dix, New Jersey, where 19-year-old soldier, Pvt.
David Lewis, told his drill instructor that he felt tired and weak, although not sick enough to skip
a training hike. Lewis was dead with 24 hours.

The autopsy revealed that Lewis had been killed by "swine flu," an influenza virus originating in
pigs. By then several other soldiers had been hospitalized with symptoms. Government doctors