Threat to National Safety; Leader from Texas Steps Up

The United Nations is the goat of the Republican Party. After all, who needs the UN???? What are they good for???? When there is a real threat to the US, look to the Leader from Texas to step up to the plate.

Flu threat to be discussed

The World Health Organization has called a summit of flu vaccine makers and nations to iron out a coping plan as threats of a flu pandemic grow.

BY MARILYNN MARCHIONE Posted on Mon, Nov. 01, 2004 Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The World Health Organization has called an unprecedented meeting of flu vaccine makers and nations to prepare plans for dealing with the growing threat of a flu pandemic.

Sixteen vaccine companies and health officials from the United States and other large countries have agreed to attend the summit in Geneva on Nov. 11, said Klaus Stohr, influenza chief of the United Nations' health agency.

''We believe that we are closer to the next pandemic than we ever were,'' Stohr said in an interview before a speech at an American Society for Microbiology meeting in Washington.

Flu kills about 36,000 people in the United States and a million worldwide each year by conservative estimates, Stohr said.

The current vaccine shortage in the United States, caused by loss of one of the country's two major flu shot suppliers, reveals how vulnerable the world is and serves as a ''dress rehearsal'' for the kind of rationing and emergency measures that would be needed in a pandemic, said Dr. Wendy Keitel of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

''The ability to respond with the production of billions of doses of vaccine is quite limited,'' Keitel said. ``We need to think through these problems now.

There you have it: the Leader from Texas stepping up to the plate. Who needs the UN???

Of course, the only thing the President of the US has to say, is that he will forego his own flu shot. Here there is a real threat to the security of the USA, and who is actually doing something about it? The UN.

Maybe Bush will get the flu. No great loss. Maybe he finally will have the time to finish The Pet Goat.