[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Page 21716]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            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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