Want to experiment on your children?

This article about testing a vaccine for bird flu
is particularly worrisome because the
vaccine is for children.

bird flu vaccine for children

This article is from Maryland but the story is from
my city -- St Louis.

I hope I don't know any of the children
who'll be involved.

What bugs me is -- what will the vaccine
prepare the children for?

Right now, bird flu is NOT going from people
to people, only from chickens to people.

It's quite likely that this will change in time,
but it will take a mutation or recombination
of the A/H5N1 virus.

And we don't know how the changed virus
might be different in other ways.

In other words, it's impossible to design a
vaccine to protect us against a particular
strain of virus that does not even exist -- yet.

The article is not clear, so I am assuming the
vaccine to be tested will consist of the current
A/H5N1 virus.

The best use of this would be to vaccinate
children who are in areas of the world where
bird flu already is infecting children or to
which it would likely spread. After all,
they're the ones most at risk from bird
flu as it is now.

And I suspect that medical authorities do hope
for a vaccine they can use to make children
in affected immune -- both because they're
likely victims of bird flu and because they
easily spread it.

If you're in Turkey, Thailand, Nigeria
or anyplace close to them, and especially
if you live in an area where your children
come into close contact with chickens,
then I can see how you'd want a good
vaccine against the current bird flu virus.

I don't have any children, but if I did
I hope I wouldn't want them
participating in this test -- until bird
flu becomes a pandemic. And then
I'd want them vaccinated against the
human to human virus.