How to Make a Better Vaccine

More than half of the $7.1 billion that President Bush wants to spend preparing for a flu pandemic is dedicated to finding better ways to make antiviral drugs and vaccines, an investment that scientists say is long overdue. Flu vaccines were being grown in chicken eggs more than 50 years ago, and that's how they're still made today. It's a painfully slow procedure that takes about nine months, with much of that time devoted to the hit-or-miss process of incubating viruses in the chicken eggs.

One way to speed things up is to toss out the eggs and grow the viruses...

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