# 2380
The US Federal Register, a compendium of the laws and regulations that gets churned out of Congress and federal agencies each year, now runs over 70,000 pages.
And I can tell you after spending just a few minutes perusing it, it is pretty dry reading.
There is no discernable plot, and quite frankly, the narrative drags in spots. On the plus side, however, a yearly subscription is only $750.
Actually, if you don't need a hard copy (or a hernia), you can search the register online.
With more than 70,000 pages (and this doesn't include the criminal code or tax laws), that's a lot of rules and regulations. As you might imagine, considering the source (the Federal Government) and the sheer size of it, there are some pretty screwy things contained within.
Today we learn, via a report filed by Robin McDowell - the AP bureau chief in Jakarta - that there is an obscure Federal regulation preventing the export of pandemic flu vaccine (and many other vaccines as well) to five `state sponsors of terrorism': North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Syria and Sudan.
I'm sure, in the myopic view of some Federal Agency or rules committee back in the mid-1990's, this must have seemed like a good idea.
Sure, it ignores the fact that viruses don't respect borders, and that if an outbreak began in one of these nations it would be in our best interest to try to help stamp it out before it could spread to other nations. But other than that . . .
This one-line regulation written more than a decade ago, and now buried in an archive of obscure regulations, apparently escaped the notice of officials at the CDC and HHS. Hard to believe, I know.
Hopefully, now that Robin McDowell has shone some light on this situation, steps can be taken to rectify this policy. A statement that shows, above all else, that I am an eternal optimist.
Here is Robin's report. Follow the links to read it in its entirety.
US controls bird flu vaccines over bioweapon fears
ROBIN McDOWELL
The Associated Press
JAKARTA, Indonesia - When Indonesia's health minister stopped sending bird flu viruses to a research laboratory in the U.S. for fear Washington could use them to make biological weapons, Defense Secretary Robert Gates laughed and called it "the nuttiest thing" he'd ever heard.
Yet deep inside an 86-page supplement to United States export regulations is a single sentence that bars U.S. exports of vaccines for avian bird flu and dozens of other viruses to five countries designated "state sponsors of terrorism."
The reason: Fear that they will be used for biological warfare.
Under this little-known policy, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Syria and Sudan may not get the vaccines unless they apply for special export licenses, which would be given or refused according to the discretion and timing of the U.S. Three of those nations , Iran, Cuba and Sudan , also are subject to a ban on all human pandemic influenza vaccines as part of a general U.S. embargo.
The regulations, which cover vaccines for everything from Dengue fever to the Ebola virus, have raised concern within the medical and scientific communities. Although they were quietly put in place more than a decade ago, they could now be more relevant because of recent concerns about bird flu. Officials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they were not even aware of the policies until contacted by The Associated Press last month and privately expressed alarm.
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The title of this essay, for those who were not around prior to 1975, comes from what is probably the most recognizable quote from Walt Kelly's long-running social satire comic strip, Pogo.
It was a reworking of Commodore Perry's famous quote "We have met the enemy, and they are ours", but turned around to suit the hysteria of the Joe McCarthy era of the early 1950's.
