Virulent outlook: expert slams federal government pandemic plans.

• Author: Wagner, Breanne
• Position: SECURITY BEAT: Homeland Defense Briefs

The Bush administration's plan for treating and stemming a pandemic outbreak in the United States will not work, said Barbara Billauer, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and a public health expert.

To prevent the spread of a pandemic disease, the government believes that mass vaccinations are the solution, but vaccines are disease specific, Billauer said at a Washington, D.C., conference on terrorism. The nation can try to inoculate the population against the one disease a terrorist may pick, but "it's akin to a portfolio manager telling you to put all your money in one basket and not diversifying. If we get it wrong by one effective DNA sequence, it's useless," she said.

Billauer believes the government is shortsighted in this way. She said the avian flu vaccine being developed today would be ineffective.

Mass vaccinations are a horrible idea anyway, Billauer said. If we line up people in a room to receive a vaccine, we forget that some of those people have already contracted the disease. This is the best way to spread a communicable disease, she said.

To stem spreading, two executive orders in place today enable the president to declare quarantine for nine specified diseases, including influenza, Billauer said. It can also be called for "any reemerging influenza that has caused or has the potential to cause a pandemic," she said. Yet there are no standards in place for imposing or removing quarantine.

"Quarantine will only work if people have trust...