Can 'biothreats' be defused?

Standing before an audience of about 100 scientists and entrepreneurs at the Hotel du Pont on Monday, Dr. Nancy Cox showed an image of a virus with a burning fuse attached. "This is a bomb," said Cox, chief influenza official at the Center for Disease Control. "It's the H5N1 virus waiting to explode." Speaking at a conference on how to respond to "biothreats"-- contagious diseases spread by nature or terrorism -- Cox predicted that more Asian countries would soon report human cases of the deadly avian influenza known as H5N1. Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam have reported cases of the flu in humans. "We are at the greatest risk of having a pandemic than any time since 1968, when the last pandemic occurred," Cox said in an interview after her presentation. That global pandemic killed about 1 million people. The worst flu outbreak, in 1917, killed more than 20 million people. One frightening development is that ducks with the virus are not showing symptoms of the flu, Cox said. Those ducks could infect unwitting farmers, and more human cases increase the chance of human-to-human transmission. Monday's conference focused largely on how to formulate and quickly manufacture vaccines in the face of a flu pandemic or terrorist attack....

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