[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 156 (Wednesday, December 7, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H11184-H11185]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. McCaul). Under a previous order of the

[[Page H11185]]

House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, I hope the gentleman from Illinois will be 
helping his seniors sign up for this program. It is a good program, and 
my constituents in Texas are benefiting from it.
  But I came tonight to talk a little bit about the President's 
pandemic plan from a legislator's perspective. The past is prologue. We 
saw in 2003 the beginnings of an outbreak of an illness called SARS. 
SARS ended up killing 800 people which is a significant number of 
deaths, but nowhere near as high as it could have been.
  Did we defeat SARS with an antiviral, no. Did we defeat SARS with a 
vaccine, no. In fact, we did not get a vaccine for SARS even though the 
CDC and the NIH very quickly came up with the genetic sequencing for 
the DNA on the SARS virus. But SARS was beaten the old-fashioned way, 
by carefully epidemiology sleuthing and quarantine.
  I had a radio host ask me the other day, he thought SARS was perhaps 
a sham. He kind of dismissed the idea, but the reality is that this 
disease was contained by those old-fashioned methods, and in fact, it 
never materialized to the threat we thought it would be. In fact, ask 
the good people in the tourism business in Toronto if they felt that 
SARS affected them in that area.
  But as we move on to the discussion of avian flu, I am a Republican. 
I believe in limited government. So do we need a big government 
solution to the pandemic profile that we may be presented? Well, I have 
also believed in empowering the individual and believe there is a 
degree of inertia in big government that hampers the ability to respond 
to a rapidly evolving crisis. Look at what happened down at the gulf 
coast with the hurricanes.
  But there is a role for government in this situation because the 
potential for human death and destruction is so vast. It is going to 
involve the public sector, the private sector, and academia, and all of 
those areas will need to be on their best game in order to defeat this 
virus.
  What can Congress do and what should Congress do and specifically, 
what should the House of Representatives do? Well, we hold hearings and 
we do that pretty well. We have held several hearings in Energy and 
Commerce about the problem of the pandemic flu. They have educated 
Members.
  Congress can certainly travel. We do that well. In fact, several 
Members have traveled to other areas in Asia. I know Secretary Leavitt 
from HHS traveled to Southeast Asia to see what is happening with the 
virus in birds in that part of the world, and I know several Members 
who are planning travel in the future. That is a good thing.
  We can communicate and talk to the press and talk to the media and 
talk to each other. We can educate each other and make certain that we 
are all individually educated about this threat and that we communicate 
with our State departments of health and our local health departments. 
This has the potential for being such a big issue that 1 to 2 million 
Americans dying is so significant that it requires a commitment. It 
requires reform. It requires change, and I would like to add that it 
requires a promise.
  Under commitment, we have got to commit the money for research and 
development on vaccines and technologies. We have to streamline the 
regulatory process at the FDA. The FDA is very close to approving a 
vaccine for the current bird flu. But the reality is if the virus 
becomes active in humans, it will change. It will do that through 
mutation, and this virus may not be effective against the vaccine that 
is being developed.
  So if the virus mutates, there has got to be a way to quickly get 
that approval through the FDA for the new vaccine.
  The distribution network. We are still seeing areas of the country 
that cannot get the current flu vaccine to distribute to their 
citizens, so the distributive network for this vaccine is going to have 
to be significantly improved.
  Most importantly, these manufacturing facilities are going to have to 
be sited within the United States. With all due respect to the former 
speaker, and wanting to get drugs from Canada and other areas, can we 
count on the good people in Belgium to give us the vaccine if we need 
it when their citizens need it as well? This vaccine will have to be 
manufactured within our shores.
  We have to improve the science on producing vaccines. We saw what 
happened last year with the egg-based vaccine for the flu vaccine: A 
bacterial contamination ruined a large batch and it was unavailable. We 
are going to have to progress to the cell-based system. It is time for 
vaccine manufacturing to come out of the 1950s and get into the 21st 
century. Our commitment of research and development money will help 
that happen, and when that happens, the time required to develop the 
vaccine and get it available to people will vastly improve.
  Under the reform criteria, medical liability reform. The medical 
justice system has to be fair. We are going to need to provide some 
limits on liability for not just the vaccine itself, but adjuvants that 
might be added to the vaccine, preservatives that might be added to the 
vaccine. And what if the outbreak is so severe and the vaccine is in 
short supply, and it is required to dilute the vaccine. We need some 
degree of liability production, but at the same time, to ensure 
indemnification of those first responders who we are going to require 
to be on the front lines if this pandemic really picks up speed.
  We need to change. There is going to have to be some degree of 
antitrust reform, and this Congress may have been called upon to do 
that. Some companies have been proactive in discussing what can be done 
to ramp up productions of vaccines or antivirals, such as Tamiflu.
  And finally, a promise. The concept of guaranteed purchase or product 
or advanced purchase. We need to look to the future. We need to find a 
universal vaccine.
  Mr. Speaker, The Los Angeles Times, on November 14, 2005, wrote, 
``Instead of being bamboozled by the flu virus' showy costume changes, 
scientists would pick dowdy, less prominent parts of the virus, the 
housekeeping features that do not change year to year and are common to 
all strains. Presenting these pieces to the human immune system would 
prompt the vaccinated person to recognize and fight off any influenza 
virus.''

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