Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T03:56:53.518Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

In the Age of Bioterrorism, an Affair to Remember: The Silver Anniversary of the Swine Flu Epidemic That Never Was

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

William P. Brandon*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina—Charlotte, USA
*
Correspondence should be addressed to Department of Political Science, UNC Charlotte, Charlotte NC 28223, USA (E-mail: [email protected]).
Get access

Extract

Twenty-five years ago, in November 1976, a physician misunderstood a cassette-tape providing continuing education for family practitioners to say that the rare neurological complication called Guillain-Barré syndrome could be a side effect of flu vaccines. When a recently vaccinated patient developed the syndrome, the physician alerted public officials and thereby started the process that ultimately ended the government campaign to immunize all Americans against swine flu. The physician was right, but for the wrong reasons, as Neustadt and Fineberg point out in the introduction to the 1983 edition of their classic case study of the swine flu episode (1983:xxv).

Type
Review Essay
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

“Bioterrorism Acquires New Dimension, Think Tank Says” (2001). Medicine and Health 55(34):3.Google Scholar
Brown, L.D. (1983). Politics and Health Care Organization: HMOs as Federal Policy. Washington DC: The Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Crosby, A.W. (1989). America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fries, J.F. (1980). “Aging, Natural Death, and the Compression of Morbidity.” New England Journal of Medicine 303(3):130–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garrett, L. (1995). The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Garrett, L. (2000). Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health. New York: Hyperion.Google Scholar
Gibbs, M.J. et al. (2001). “Recombination in the Hemagglutinin Gene of the 1918 ‘Spanish Flu.”’ Science 293:1842–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gottlieb, M.S. et al. (1981). “Pneumocystis Pneumonia—Los Angeles.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 30:250–52.Google Scholar
Gruenberg, E.M. (1977). “The Failures of Success.” Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly/Health and Society 55(1):324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Institute of Medicine. (2000). Vaccines for the 21st Century: A Tool for Decisionmaking. Washington DC: National Academy Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, H.B. and Broder, D.S. (1996). The System: The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point. Boston: Little Brown and Co.Google Scholar
Kolata, G. (1999). Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Laver, G. and Garman, E. (2001). “The Origin and Control of Pandemic Influenza.” Science 293:1776–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levin, M.A. and Sanger, M.B. (2000). After the Cure: Managing AIDS and Other Public Health Crises. Lawrence KS: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
McGinley, L. (2001). “Suddenly, Public-Health Services Are Seen as a Priority After Attacks.” Wall Street Journal (September 28). Accessed throughWSJ.com website.Google Scholar
McKeown, T. (1979). The Role of Medicine: Dream, Mirage, or Nemesis? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Nesmith, J. (2001). “Biological Attack Small but Staggering Threat: U.S. Preparation for Invasion of Germs is Questioned.” Charlotte Observer (September 30):1A, 11A.Google Scholar
Neustadt, R.E. (1960). Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership. New York: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
Neustadt, R.E. (1999). Report to JFK: The Skybolt Crisis in Perspective. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paul, J.R. (1971). A History of Poliomyelitis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Pennisi, E. (1997). “First Genes Isolated from the Deadly 1918 Flu Virus.” Science 275:1793.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pickrell, J. (2001). “Killer Flu with a Human-Pig Pedigree?” Science 292:1041.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pyle, G.F. (1986). The Diffusion of Influenza: Patterns and Paradigms. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Reid, A.H. et al. (1999). “Origin and Evolution of the 1918 ‘Spanish’ Influenza Virus Hemagglutinin Gene.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 96:1651–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rivlin, A.M. (1971). Systematic Thinking for Social Action. Washington DC: The Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Schoenbaum, S.C., McNeil, B.J., and Kavet, J. (1976). “The Swine-Influenza Decision.” New England Journal of Medicine 295:759–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, H. (1976). “The Swine Flu Fiasco.” New York Times (December 21):op-ed page.Google Scholar
Shilts, R. (1988). And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Silverstein, A.M. (1981). Pure Politics and Impure Science: The Swine Flu Affair. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Taubenberger, J.K. (1998). “Influenza Virus Hemagglutinin Cleavage into HA1, HA2: No Laughing Matter.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 95:9713–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taubenberger, J.K. et al. (1997). “Initial Genetic Characterization of the 1918 ‘Spanish’ Influenza Virus.” Science 175:1793–96.Google Scholar
U.S. Comptroller General (1977). The Swine Flu Program: An Unprecedented Venture in Preventive Medicine. Report to Congress, HRD-77-115. Washington DC: General Accounting Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2000). Healthy People 2010. Conference Edition. 2 vols. Washington DC: USDHHS.Google Scholar
U.S. General Accounting Office (2000). Influenza Pandemic: Plan Needed for Federal and State Response. Report to Congressional Requesters, GAO-01-4. Washington DC: GAO.Google Scholar
U.S. General Accounting Office (2001a). Bioterrorism: Federal Research and Preparedness Activities. Report to Congressional Committees, GAO-01-915. Washington DC: GAO.Google Scholar
U.S. General Accounting Office (2001b). Flu Vaccine: Supply Problems Heighten Need to Ensure Access for High-Risk People. Report to Congressional Requesters, GAO-01-624. Washington DC: General Accounting Office.Google Scholar
Webster, R.G. (2001). “A Molecular Whodunit.” Science 293:1773–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar