When the newspaper of record for the United States produces gibberish about the massive dissemination of a flu virus to which many people have no immunity, I get worried. Here's a bit from an article in today's Times:
Dr. Jared N. Schwartz, a microbiologist and official of the College of American Pathologists, said his group asked Meridian to include a type A influenza virus in the test kit, but did not specify which strain. When Meridian checked a United States government manual, he said, its team found that the A(H2N2) strain could be sent to laboratories as a biosafety Level 2 microbe, the second-lowest level of danger in a four-class rating.
But Meridian apparently did not know that the C.D.C. and the National Institutes of Health have been discussing upgrading the classification of the A(H2N2) strain to Level 3, as Canada and some other countries have done.
Dr. Schwartz said that Meridian "perhaps did not use good judgment" in selecting the A(H2N2) strain, and should not have sent the strain to Canada and other countries without checking further on its biosafety classification.
Dr. Plummer agreed, saying, "Meridian made an error in choosing the A(H2N2) virus to send out." The strain was listed as A(H3N2), a common strain, on the permit forms for customs, Dr. Plummer said.
So, what went wrong? There are several possibilities:
1. The Center for Disease Control (and the NIH) should have made this strain a category 3, but instead made it a category 2. (In making it category 2, were they in fact authorizing it to go in test kits? What's up with these categories?)
2. Meridian should have known that CDC was considering making this strain a category 3 and should have treated it as if it was already a category 3. (Why should they have known that? How could they have known that?)
3. Meridian should have known that Canadians regarded this strain as category 3. They should have known that Canadians would object to getting a category 3 strain in a test kit.
4. Meridian should have labeled the strain correctly when it was sent through customs.
There are also a couple of questions lurking here: was the alleged mistake of choosing the wrong strain a separate mistake from the mistake of labeling it wrong, in a way that wouldn't alarm Canadian customs, or were those mistakes somehow connected? By the way, what's up with a label system that makes something dangerous one pen stroke different from something safe?
Further, why is everyone saying that the mistake is Meridian's mistake, when, on this account, they were simply relying on information in the government manual? Is the problem just because they didn't consult the Canadian manuals before shipping, or is Meridian expected to make an independent assessment of the danger of the strains it ships, apart from looking up numbers in a manual? (To put it another way, would Meridian be in the clear, if it had just shipped this stuff to U.S. labs?)
I suppose if I get on Google and go hunting, some of these mysteries will be cleared up. But what worries me is that the major paper in the country can't tell a straight story about this matter. That suggests that the reporters (Lawrence Altman and Marc Santora) are confused or that the information they are getting is very messy, or both.
Let's all earn our pay, folks, and do our jobs here. Let's get picky. This one matters.
Posted by shea0017 at April 14, 2005 11:15 AM