H1N1 vaccine "remarkably safe": NIH chief

Eleven year-old Kerimal Suriel receives an H1N1 swine flu vaccine at the Children's Hospital Boston primary care clinic in Boston, Massachusetts October 7, 2009.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - There is nothing unique or scary about the new H1N1 swine flu vaccine that should keep people from getting it, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, said on Monday.

He said the H1N1 vaccine is made in exactly the same way as seasonal flu vaccine, and by the very same companies.

Yet fears about its safety -- some fostered by media accounts and personalities -- are raising undue worry.

"The concerns that there might be something unique and scary about this are utterly unjustified," Collins said in an interview at the Society of Neuroscience meeting in Chicago.

"I would say this is a remarkably safe and effective vaccine," he said, noting that the risks "are about as close to zero as we can measure."

He said the H1N1 pandemic is now widespread in the United States. "It's upon us. There is no part of the country where it is not present in various degrees," he said.

"Any notion that this was an unnecessary response is fading away pretty quickly," said Collins, a genetics pioneer who in July was tapped by President Barack Obama to head the NIH.

He told reporters at the meeting that his first few months as NIH director have been like "a boy drinking from a fire hose," referring to the deluge of proposals from scientists hoping to win some of the $5 billion in medical and scientific funding set aside from the $787 billion economic stimulus package.

While that will go a long way toward easing pent-up demand for funding of scientific research, he said his agency could face a steep drop in the fiscal year 2011 budget unless the economy begins to rebound.

"It's going to be tough, and anybody who has not realized the reality here needs to be prepared for what could be a very difficult time," he said.

Collins said NIH will continue to fund basic science, but he also hopes to support the use of powerful new research tools, including new imaging technologies and genomics -- studying the DNA map to find causes of diseases.

He also hopes to support the use of powerful computers to make medical discoveries and nanotechnology, the design and manipulation of ultra-tiny materials.

Collins said NIH will also play a role in health care reform by providing studies that give policymakers better evidence on which to base their decision making.

He said the NIH will conduct more studies that compare the effectiveness of therapies, but also on how different drugs affect different people based on their genetic makeup.

Collins said his pet project is to devote more resources to research in rare diseases, which often do not get much exploration by drug companies.

"This would not be to compete with biotech and pharma, but basically to de-risk projects that currently don't attract real investments because they are too risky," Collins said.

"The potential here is to speed up developments for disease that otherwise get very little attention as far as treatment," he said, adding, "The science is ready to do this."

(Editing by Maggie Fox)