Health Experts Bet On Spread Of Bird Flu

According to this article, a new project initiated by the University of Iowa has public health experts placing bets on the spread of avian influenza. The goal of the project is to better predict the advance of a potential avian flu pandemic by developing a faster way to collect expert opinion about the spread of the disease.

Public health experts from around the world, including epidemiologists, veterinarians and other medical professionals, will be asked to join an online trading system where they can buy contracts which are based on predicting the spread of avian flu. According to the article, a preliminary version of the bird flu market started in February 2007; the market included a list of 11 yes and no questions, and each question was considered as a separate market.

According to Dr. Larry Madoff, the editor of ProMed, a disease-monitoring programme of the International Society for Infectious Diseases, the project is an experiment, and “[t]he hypothesis is we'll be able to harness lots of people with different viewpoints and information, and we['ll] know sooner when something is going to happen than if we wait for a report."