Down with the flu?

Experts fear that the bird flu currently rampaging across Asia will mutate into a virus as deadly as the one that killed 40 million people in 1918. The good news is that there is the technology to defeat this killer. The template for mass-producing a vaccine is being made in British and the U.S. laboratories right now, something that would not have been technically possible only a year ago. Because the influenza virus's two surface proteins are constantly undergoing small mutations, getting vaccinated or catching flu one year does not necessarily stop catching it the next. INSET: PLAN B: ANTIVIRALS.