UNITED STATES: Company stuff up nearly causes pandemic

On April 12, Dr Klaus Stohr, the head of the Geneva-based World Health Organisation's global pandemic program, told reporters that Canadian authorities had discovered on March 25 that between 4700 and 5700 laboratories in 18 countries had been sent unlabelled samples of the flu virus H2N2, a pandemic of which killed 4 million people in 1957, by a US company working for the College of American Pathologists. The live virus samples were mistakenly contained in flu test kits sent out by Meridian Bioscience last October. On April 15, Centres for Disease Control director Julie Geberding said it was "almost impossible to believe" the company "didn't know they were dealing with H2N2". Meridian had been criticised in 2001 by the US Food and Drug Administration for lax controls that led to the recall of 30 products.

From Green Left Weekly, April 20, 2005.

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From GLW issue 623