U.S. new Flu Vaccine Program

Worried that the 1940s-era egg-based flu vaccine technology still in use won't stand up to bird flu, the federal government on Thursday awarded Baxter International Inc. and five other vaccine makers more than $1 billion to advance a new technology that eliminates the need for chicken eggs.The contracts are a vote of support for new cell-based flu vaccine production technologies being pursued by Deerfield-based Baxter and others. They are also a boost for vaccine makers in an era when the United States and other countries lack sufficient capacity to make vaccines against both seasonal flu and pandemic bird flu.

Boosting capacity is what this is all about, we do have the technology to predict most people from a pandemic, the questions is can we develop quickly enough, in amounts large enough, to protect every human being in the world, the answer to that will always be no. As we all know there is more than enough food in the world for everyone, but hunger and famine are more distribution, than drought issues. The problem is getting it all there, stockpiling, and distributing it.

It is a big boost for the drug companies says John Berkowitz of www.medequote.com, with the new technology they will be able to replace and update vaccination stocks across the world for more than just pandemic flu. This is a big piece in equation to mitigating the damage and suffering a pandemic would cause.