With the recent H1N1 flu outbreaks, a Lincoln pharmaceutical company is working on a vaccine... but not one for humans.
Pfizer is working to make sure pigs can't get the virus. Even though no pig has gotten H1N1 yet, scientists recently proved it's possible. Pfizer scientists hope a new pig vaccine for H1N1 is ready to ship by flu season.
"Pigs naturally have the ability to be infected with multiple strains of flu," said Michael Huether, Pfizer's director of technical support in Lincoln.
No pigs have naturally gotten H1N1, but Pfizer hopes to protect pork producers in case it does migrate to pigs.
'What we're trying to do is give them an alternative, should that need arise and they need that for exporting product, we want to make sure our livestock is protected," said Huether.
There's a secondary reason for the vaccine. Pigs can usually give flu back to humans. No one has proved that could happen with H1N1, but pigs are a natural mixing vessel where flu mutates.
"Basically, avian flu, human flu can all go into a pig, it will go inside there, all those viruses mix together, they can mutate, they can re-assort and come out with a different strain of flu. So obviously there's a lot of concern, some of it doesn't have merit, some of it does," he said.
However, Pfizer admits pork producers aren't sold on the idea of vaccinating their pigs since there's not yet a case of H1N1 in pigs.
"To be quite honest there's still a lot of talk about whether the pork producers feel they need the vaccine. The USDA has made the strains available, but they haven't mandated any vaccination," Huether said.
Even if H1N1 infects pigs, he said the meat is still safe to eat. The only way infection could happen would be a face to face meeting between pig and human.
"Pork is fine to eat, this doesn't put any risk to the general population," Huether said.
So right now the vaccine is simply a precaution.
This news from Pfizer comes the same day the company is hit with a $2.3 billion payment to settle a law suit for illegally marketing medicines. It's the largest settlement of it's kind to date. A Pfizer spokesperson says the company settled so it can move on to, "Develop innovative medicine."
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