Researchers race to boost bird flu vaccine
Additives
studied as way to help fight potential pandemic
By David Brown - Medical
researchers bracing for a global influenza epidemic are
in frantic search of a way to perform a
loaves-and-fishes miracle with the world's skimpy annual
production of flu vaccine.
That production -- about
300 million flu shots a year -- cannot be increased
quickly or easily, no matter how dire the circumstances.
If the supply is going to protect more than a tiny
fraction of the world's 6.5 billion people, some way has
to be found to stretch it.
Nearly all the experts
believe that a vaccine is the only tool capable of
stopping a flu pandemic. They also agree the world is
closer today to that potentially calamitous event than
it has been in decades.
