Wednesday, October 19, 2005  Bird flu and profits at Roche
Remember the scare about anthrax? And smallpox? And SARS?  Bird
flu has been affecting the world for many years.  Bird flus have
been troublesome for agriculture at least since 1878, when
Italian poultry were hit with a disease labeled fowl plague.
Each year, for many decades, a relatively small number of people
have caught bird flu from birds.  In 1995 Mexico stopped an
outbreak of severe H5N2 flu. In 2002 Italy became the first
country to eradicate bird flu using a marker vaccine and regular
testing.  2,000,000 people die each year from tuberculosis.  Why
is bird flu suddenly getting a lot of publicity in the
media?,,9068-1833185,00.html  Widespread fears of a bird flu
pandemic have helped spark a sales surge at Swiss drugs group
Roche, which makes Tamiflu  Roche, which is the world's only
manufacturer of Tamiflu, revealed this morning that group sales
had surged to more than £11.1 billion in the third quarter,
driven by "significant growth" in s