The following information about policies implemented since September 2005 by the Bush administration that may impact the health and development of children within the autism spectrum.  This information was last updated March 7, 2006.

U.S. measures to protect against the Bird Flu, such as stock-piling the anti-viral drug, Tamiflu (manufactured by Swiss Pharmaceutical, Roche) as Great Britain and Canada have done, have been done on a much smaller scale. The US stockpiles today are tiny -- enough to treat only 1 to 2 percent of the population. This is far lower than many other high-income countries, many of which have stockpiles large enough for 10 to 25 percent of their populations.  And these figures are based upon the assumption that each person will only need 10 doses of Tamiflu. But the actual course of treatment may require more doses, and use to prevent rather than treat avian flu could require ten times as much.  Roche cannot meet the exploding demand for Tamiflu, and it is still trying to fight off or limit efforts by generic producers in Argentina, Canada, India, Korea, Taiwan and Thailand to produce cheap copies of the drug.  However, even if these countries succeed in issuing compulsory licenses to the Roche/Gillead patents on Tamiflu, to enable generic competition for the drug, the US will still have problems importing the medicine. This is because of a little known provision in a 2003 World Trade Organization agreement on patents and medicine. The United States elected to "opt-out" of the WTO provisions that would have allowed foreign countries to export generic medicines to the US, when there is a compulsory license on a patent.  

The US "opt-out" was extreme. It covers every conceivable case, including cases of national emergency, such as flu pandemic, an anthrax attack, SARS, or anything else. Now the Bush Administration seeks to make this policy permanent, in negotiations taking place right now, so that it can be announced a the December WTO meeting in Hong Kong. This policy, which is coordinated with the European Commission, is designed to undermine compulsory licensing, and pressure poor countries not to use this tool. But now it will prevent the US from effectively harnessing the power of the market to produce needed stockpiles of generic Tamiflu.  As a consequence, we will wait years before we have the stockpiles, putting our citizens at risk.

The US government is also putting pressure on countries to stop compulsory licensing of Tamiflu, making prices higher and shortages worse. US trade officials are also asking poor countries to erect very significant barriers for the registration of generic drugs, using aggressive new demands for intellectual property rights in the scientific evidence from clinical trials that drugs are safe and effective. The US, under Bush, is also opposing a global treaty on medical R&D, that would promote global cooperation in funding new treatments for infectious diseases and other global public health problems, because it wants to focus on higher intellectual property rights as the only mechanism to address innovation in new medicines.

 Also there is no plan for how to effectively distribute needed medication in the advent of an epidemic.  Bush has, however, granted himself the ability to use the National Guard to declare martial law and take away civil liberties in areas affected by the Bird Flu, mostly likely resulting in quarantining large cities without putting an infrastructure in place to ensure the survival of the people subjected to this quarantine.  This legislation also explicitly empowered the National Guard to forcibly immunize people, if it is deemed necessary.