US News and World Report 12.24.2012
It may only be a matter of time before bird flu can be passed between humans. A new global flu pandemic within the next couple years is inevitable, one prominent flu vaccine manufacturer says.
Joseph Kim, head of Inovio Pharmaceuticals, which is currently working on a "universal" flu vaccine that would protect against most strains of the virus, says the world is due for a massive bird flu outbreak that could be much deadlier than the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
"I really believe we were lucky in 2009 [with the swine flu] because the strain that won out was not particularly lethal," he says. "Bird flu kills over 60 percent of people that it infects, regardless of health or age. It is a phenomenal killing machine—our only saving grace thus far is the virus has not yet jumped to humans."
Kim says that if a deadlier version of H5N1 is going to emerge naturally, it will probably come from southeast Asia, where there are large pig, human, and bird populations. If a pandemic were to occur, the virus would likely be passed from birds to pigs, where it would mutate, and then from pigs to humans, he says.
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