Pandemic Flu being compared to 1918 "Spanish Flu"?

According to an article in the Associated Press, scientists believe they can learn how to fight a possible pandemic from the H5N1 virus by studying the last major pandemic--- the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed over 40M people worldwide. Not only will they be studying documents and other literature --- they want to exhume the body of a British diplomat who died in the last pandemic -- in the hopes that the body (buried in a lead coffin) is intact enough to retrieve body tissue.

Why are scientists focusing on the 1918 pandemic? Because "victims of Spanish flu frequently experienced an overly aggressive immune response, which began to attack their own bodies. The same phenomenon has been seen in human H5N1 cases."

For more information regarding the 1918 Spanish flu, you can watch "Standing in the Safety Zone" on the CareTALK channel on YouTube. For information about H5N1 or concerns about a pandemic flu, you can visit the government's official site.