http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/09/arts/television/09squa.html?_r=1&oref=login
May 9, 2006
<NYT_HEADLINE version="1.0" type=" ">Two Experts Criticize Film as Unrealistic </NYT_HEADLINE>
<NYT_BYLINE version="1.0" type=" ">By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
</NYT_BYLINE><NYT_TEXT>"Fatal Contact," tonight's ABC movie about bird flu reaching the United States, has been denounced as medically unrealistic by two prominent flu experts who have seen it, one of whom is the film's technical consultant.
While much of the film follows conventional wisdom about how a pandemic might unfold, scenes of blood spouting from victims, bodies dumped in mass graves and the suggestion that the virus could mutate until it is 100 percent fatal were "over the top," both said.
With interest in avian flu intense ? the White House issued the second part of its pandemic plan last week ? health officials are worried about the effect on the public.
"It's unfortunate that a lot of people may be scared by it," said Thomas W. Skinner, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who has seen the film. "But the best antidote for fear is information, and if it makes people get more up to speed on pandemics, that's a good thing."
Yesterday, two flu experts who were involved in the film early held a telephone news conference to criticize it. One was John M. Barry, author of "The Great Influenza," a history of the 1918 Spanish flu, who is in the credits as the film's consultant. The other was Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
Both especially objected to the ending, in which an American doctor lands in an Angolan village after the pandemic's first wave has killed 25 million people worldwide. She finds nothing alive except flies swarming over a field of blood-spattered bodies and announces that the second wave has begun. A flock of geese is seen flying away ? an echo of the opening shot of geese over China, where the pandemic begins.
"To say it's overdone is an understatement," Mr. Barry said. He declined to help publicize the film, he said, but did not ask that his name be removed. His consulting, he said, had been merely a two-hour conference call and some later comments on the script, which he did not write. He compared his role to that of a lawyer whose client pays for his advice but ignores it.
Nonetheless, he said, "the one benefit is that it raises people's awareness."
Dr. Osterholm was harsher. "It's really bad," he said of the film's science. The ending "looks like the Jonestown massacre, not something caused by infectious disease." He also ridiculed a scene in which bodies are poured from dump trucks into what looks like an open-pit mine. "Corpse management will be a problem in a pandemic," he said, "but none of us believe that will happen."
He and Mr. Barry disagreed over a scene in which desperate New Yorkers ambush a military convoy escorting vaccine through Manhattan. Dr. Osterholm expects riots over shortages; Mr. Barry felt the scene was exaggerated.
The film's producers defended it yesterday, saying that some victims died bloodlessly, that the final scene was meant to be a village emptied by people fleeing as well as by death, and that they had heeded much of Mr. Barry's advice. For example, they said, they dropped a plan to have the flu virus cross with the AIDS virus.
"We honestly tried to do this as accurately as we could," said Judith Verno, an executive producer.
Much of the movie repeats predictions made by many flu experts.
For example, the flu erupts in China but quickly travels to the United States in an American businessman. He dies rapidly of flooded lungs, as many did in 1918, but many infected by him survive.
Worried governors are warned that it will take six months to make enough vaccine because the newest mutation of the virus must be used. When the first doses arrive, they go to health workers.
Quarantines and fences don't stop the virus but do start riots and food shortages. Hospitals are overwhelmed; in one scene, a nurse takes a dying man fighting for breath off a respirator because others need it. Many people fail to wear masks. (The doctors presumably skip it because it's hard to act in one. The star, Joely Richardson, makes another disastrous slip in infection control: she tends a favorite dying patient, then weeps into her contaminated glove.)
But the group most offended may be birders. The film seems to blame migrating geese for seeding the globe with human virus, while it is hotly disputed today whether wild birds are spreading it even among chickens.
</NYT_TEXT>
May 9, 2006
<NYT_HEADLINE version="1.0" type=" ">Two Experts Criticize Film as Unrealistic </NYT_HEADLINE>
<NYT_BYLINE version="1.0" type=" ">By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
</NYT_BYLINE><NYT_TEXT>"Fatal Contact," tonight's ABC movie about bird flu reaching the United States, has been denounced as medically unrealistic by two prominent flu experts who have seen it, one of whom is the film's technical consultant.
While much of the film follows conventional wisdom about how a pandemic might unfold, scenes of blood spouting from victims, bodies dumped in mass graves and the suggestion that the virus could mutate until it is 100 percent fatal were "over the top," both said.
With interest in avian flu intense ? the White House issued the second part of its pandemic plan last week ? health officials are worried about the effect on the public.
"It's unfortunate that a lot of people may be scared by it," said Thomas W. Skinner, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who has seen the film. "But the best antidote for fear is information, and if it makes people get more up to speed on pandemics, that's a good thing."
Yesterday, two flu experts who were involved in the film early held a telephone news conference to criticize it. One was John M. Barry, author of "The Great Influenza," a history of the 1918 Spanish flu, who is in the credits as the film's consultant. The other was Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
Both especially objected to the ending, in which an American doctor lands in an Angolan village after the pandemic's first wave has killed 25 million people worldwide. She finds nothing alive except flies swarming over a field of blood-spattered bodies and announces that the second wave has begun. A flock of geese is seen flying away ? an echo of the opening shot of geese over China, where the pandemic begins.
"To say it's overdone is an understatement," Mr. Barry said. He declined to help publicize the film, he said, but did not ask that his name be removed. His consulting, he said, had been merely a two-hour conference call and some later comments on the script, which he did not write. He compared his role to that of a lawyer whose client pays for his advice but ignores it.
Nonetheless, he said, "the one benefit is that it raises people's awareness."
Dr. Osterholm was harsher. "It's really bad," he said of the film's science. The ending "looks like the Jonestown massacre, not something caused by infectious disease." He also ridiculed a scene in which bodies are poured from dump trucks into what looks like an open-pit mine. "Corpse management will be a problem in a pandemic," he said, "but none of us believe that will happen."
He and Mr. Barry disagreed over a scene in which desperate New Yorkers ambush a military convoy escorting vaccine through Manhattan. Dr. Osterholm expects riots over shortages; Mr. Barry felt the scene was exaggerated.
The film's producers defended it yesterday, saying that some victims died bloodlessly, that the final scene was meant to be a village emptied by people fleeing as well as by death, and that they had heeded much of Mr. Barry's advice. For example, they said, they dropped a plan to have the flu virus cross with the AIDS virus.
"We honestly tried to do this as accurately as we could," said Judith Verno, an executive producer.
Much of the movie repeats predictions made by many flu experts.
For example, the flu erupts in China but quickly travels to the United States in an American businessman. He dies rapidly of flooded lungs, as many did in 1918, but many infected by him survive.
Worried governors are warned that it will take six months to make enough vaccine because the newest mutation of the virus must be used. When the first doses arrive, they go to health workers.
Quarantines and fences don't stop the virus but do start riots and food shortages. Hospitals are overwhelmed; in one scene, a nurse takes a dying man fighting for breath off a respirator because others need it. Many people fail to wear masks. (The doctors presumably skip it because it's hard to act in one. The star, Joely Richardson, makes another disastrous slip in infection control: she tends a favorite dying patient, then weeps into her contaminated glove.)
But the group most offended may be birders. The film seems to blame migrating geese for seeding the globe with human virus, while it is hotly disputed today whether wild birds are spreading it even among chickens.
</NYT_TEXT>
