Mike the Usurper wrote:
saying he wanted to stockpile enough vaccine to protect 20 million Americans against the current strain of bird flu.
Once again, dubya demonstrates why Crawford needs their villiage idiot back. The current strain of bird flu is a great hazard to birds, and probably to the people who handle them, but making a vaccine for the current strain will do a whole lot of nothing other than throw yet more money down a hole.
Funding research is one thing, and creating a system to produce vaccines faster than the current system is a good idea, except the way to actually DO that would be to put it under the direct control of either CDC or NIH, and I think that'd be a bit too much socialized medicine for these guys. If this goes through it is yet another windfall for pharmaceutical companies and yet another shovel to the back of the head for everyone else.
The conspiracy theorist that lives in the back of my head is wondering if bush is planning to set himself up as a hero by the end of his term. A bird flu leak would seem very convenient.
