New HHS head takes on swine flu

As news of the first American swine flu death--a 23-month-old baby in Texas--broke yesterday, the US Senate confirmed Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius's appointment to head the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and she got right to work voicing the government's response to the potential pandemic. This morning (April 29), the new HHS secretary--backed by acting Center for Disease Control director Richard Besser, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci and others--gave her first press conference on swine flu. "We'll be working quickly, but safety is and will remain our top priority," Sebelius said in discussing the agency's efforts to formulate a vaccine to combat the new flu strain. She added that once a successful vaccine candidate is developed, the National Institutes of Health will quickly carry out clinical trials to assess safety and proper dosing of the drug. Meanwhile at Columbia University, bioinformatician linkurl:Raul...