WASHINGTON - Federal law-enforcement and national-security authorities are on alert for counterfeit doses of H1N1 vaccine and anti-viral medications that they expect to surface in the United States, particularly as shortages of both continue to grow.
Officials from the Department of Homeland Security said they have not yet found any hard evidence of illicit production or distribution of bogus vaccine or Tamiflu, according to testimony recently submitted to the House Committee on Homeland Security.
But the officials told the panel they aren't just waiting around. Instead, they have "proactively initiated undercover activity" to find anyone trying to peddle the fake or un-inspected vaccine or pharmaceuticals, particularly on the Internet, according to Government Security News, a trade publication that broke the story.
Bottom line: Don't buy anything purporting to be swine-flu vaccine or treatments off the Web.
Seems the recession and Wall Street tumble have dinged the bottom lines of many in Congress.
An analysis of recent financial disclosure reports filed by lawmakers shows that the median wealth of members of Congress dropped nearly 5 percent when compared to the prior year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group.
U.S. senators have a median reportable worth of $1.79 million for 2008, compared to $2.27 million in 2007. In the House, the median income last year was $622,200, down from $724, 200 in 2007.
Hardest hit: Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz.; John Kerry, D-Mass.; Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.; and Mark Warner, D-Va. All suffered double-digit percentage declines, the watchdogs calculated.
Couldn't we just ask Iran?
Tucked into a spending bill for federal energy and water projects recently approved by President Barack Obama is $20 million to jump-start domestic production of medical isotopes -- radioactive material used for imaging procedures such as MRIs. Recent shutdowns of several foreign reactors have left a shortage. The plan is to convert several research reactors around the country to support isotope production.
Reversing deadspeak: Linguists supported by the National Science Foundation are meeting at the University of Utah next week hoping to lay the groundwork for an international online catalogue of endangered and dying languages.
Native tongues have long gone extinct -- perhaps half of all existing languages in the last 500 years. But experts say the march of civilization and globalization -- and, yes, communication systems -- puts nearly 90 percent of the world's roughly 7,000 languages at risk. Information on how people talk around the world isn't just academic -- languages carry knowledge important to medicine, botany, geography, even genetics.
(E-mail Lisa Hoffman at hoffmanl(at)shns.com and Lee Bowman at bowman(at)shns.com.)
WASHINGTON CALLING
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