Bird Flu Victims Die After Drug Resistance

Associated Press (picked up by major broadcast and print outlets nationwide including the New York Times and the Washington Post), Dec. 21

In a development health experts are calling alarming, two bird flu patients in Vietnam died after developing resistance to Tamiflu, the key drug that governments are stockpiling in case of a large-scale outbreak.

Dr. Anne Moscona, a flu expert at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, called the deaths frightening and said they demonstrate the dangers of hoarding drugs.

"People who stockpile will naturally share or take drugs at the wrong dose, and that's really a bad idea," said Moscona, who wrote an accompanying commentary in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/21/AR2005122101581.html