Editor's Note: The following paragraph contained an editing error:

"Of the 50 million doses the government plans to put into the SNS, though, HHS says only 37.4 million have been procured and 29.8 million treatment courses put into the SNS, and the remaining 7.6 million treatment courses are due by the end of calendar year 2007. The balance, HHS says, is expected this year."

The paragraph should read:

"Of the 50 million doses the government plans to put into the SNS, though, HHS says only 37.4 million have been procured and 29.8 million treatment courses put into the SNS. The balance, HHS says, is expected this year."

The US government’s new proposal to use drugs like Tamiflu and Relenza as a prophylaxis to prevent infection by a pandemic strain of influenza is wrongheaded, says Dr. Graeme Laver, a former professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian National University in Canberra.

Laver, who played a key role in the development of both drugs, has been studying influenza viruses for nearly 40 years. He and Dr. Robert Webster (another world-renowned virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital) are credited with having first found the link between human flu and bird flu. In the 1960's, both received world acclaim when they developed a new and innovative generation of vaccines for flu viruses.

Laver told HSToday.us that “prophylaxis with Tamiflu in a pandemic is wrong. Early treatment is the only way to go.”

But the US government proposes to use Tamiflu and Relenza prophylactically to prevent infection, including giving guidelines to businesses that may want to buy the drugs in advance to treat or protect employees.

The Department of Health and Human Services’s (HSS) pandemic plan calls for “targeted antiviral prophylaxis … of disease clusters, administration of antiviral treatment to persons with confirmed or suspected cases of pandemic influenza, and provision of drug prophylaxis to all persons in [an] affected community.”

Similarly, should clusters of humans be found infected with a virulent strain of influenza like H5N1, the World Health Organization's plan of attack is to flood the regions with Tamiflu in the hope that it will quell further spread of the virus.

Dr. Ben Schwartz, a pandemic planner at HHS who wrote most of the new guidelines, told Reuters that "for prophylaxis of health care and emergency services workers, the responsibility for purchasing and stockpiling the drugs would primarily be on the health care organizations ... or on the emergency organizations that would be protecting their workforce.”

Meanwhile, HSToday.us has learned that there also are discussions within HHS about making Tamiflu and Relenza “push packets” available to people to have on hand in the event of a pandemic.

Laver also has problems with that notion.

“Personal stockpiles of Tamiflu or Relenza are not a good idea,” Laver told HSToday.us, explaining, “personal stockpiles are wrong for two reasons. First, nothing might happen and the stockpiles will be wasted and, second, if the stockpiles are used, it will be on the basis of self-diagnosis, and that is not a great idea.”