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BIRD FLU FILM PORTRAYING PANDEMIC PANIC SET FOR USA TV(New Zealand Press Association Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)Wellington, May 1 NZPA - Images of bodies piling up in Auckland so quickly it takes dump trucks to haul them away, and of neighbourhoods being quarantined with barbed wire will feature on American television next week. But some scientists are protesting the scare tactics used in the ABC network's television movie Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America, which was filmed in Auckland, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Fatal Contact stars Stacy Keach, Joely Richardson, and Ann Cusack in a worst-case scenario, if the H5N1 bird-flu virus was transmitted between humans. ABC will broadcast the movie on May 9, in a ratings period when American networks often trot out scare fare in a bid to lift audience numbers and advertising rates. The film starts with an infected American businessman in Hong Kong infecting several dozen airline passengers, who scatter around the globe. The influenza pandemic is played as a horror movie, with bodies thrown on a pyre, like the carcasses of cows torched in the 2001 foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Britain. ``The reason to portray it this way is to kind of give a wake-up call to everyone and this is something we shouldn't ignore and we should be as prepared as we should be,'' Diana Kerew, one of the executive producers of the movie said. But bird flu expert Michael Osterholm told US media the blurring of information and entertainment could do the public a disservice. Dr Osterholm, who directs the Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, was particularly critical the movie showing officials using barbed wire to fence off and quarantine entire neighbourhoods. US national vaccine programme director Bruce Gellen said the film portrayed realistic scenarios, including how it could be months before a vaccine was available, and that the US could be reliant on countries such as France for vaccine supplies. NZPA WGT kca kk nb |