Avian Influenza

AVIAN INFLUENZA

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I am pleased to support and cosponsor Senator Harkin's amendment aimed at enhancing our capability to combat an avian flu pandemic. This amendment provides absolutely crucial funding for key items that will clearly be needed to fight off this menace: a substantial stockpile of the only antiviral medication effective against H5N1 flu; expansion of the ability of our State and local public health departments, which are the first line of defense against flu, to meet the threat; increased global surveillance for dangerous pathogens to pick up the first signs of a spreading epidemic, a priority issue that Senator Frist and I have worked on for several years; improving our country's infrastructure for vaccine manufacture, which is sorely deficient; and money for communication and outreach, so we can have everybody prepared and on the same page.

We are all concerned about preparation for bioterrorist attacks. Smallpox, anthrax, plague, and other pathogens may be coming down the road at some point. But the public health experts tell us that H5N1 avian flu has already started down the road. It is not in the U.S. yet, and the scientists don't know when it might get here, but it is heading in our direction. The avian flu virus is spreading throughout Asia, carried by migratory waterfowl with a worldwide reach. The virus is continuously changing and adapting, heading toward the human-to-human transmission capability that could trigger a pandemic.

And we do know from the first 100 human cases, which have been limited so far to Southeast Asia, that this stuff is really lethal, with a case-fatality rate approaching 50 percent. By contrast, the deadly 1918 Spanish flu that killed millions of people had a case-fatality rate of only 2 percent. We're talking about a threat to this Nation as big as any we have faced.

Fortunately, we have a good idea of the measures we need to take to mitigate the impact of avian flu. But these measures cost money and have a significant lag time before they can be put in place. Many of these measures require resources only available in foreign countries. We don't know how much time we have got, and we have got to get moving on this right now. We really can't wait weeks and months for the ``right'' appropriation bill, for some ``advisory committee'' to finish its work, or for the completion of a ``comprehensive'' antiterror plan. The responsible, prudent move is to act now, to start putting in place the countermeasures that we know will work if implemented in time. The old philosopher who said that ``an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure'' may not have known anything about RNA viruses, but that advice would seem quite applicable to our current situation.

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