Swine flu can be both misfortune and opportunity.

The outbreak of the H1N1 influenza strain (otherwise known as the ickier-sounding "swine flu") has major political and
public-health ramifications, but it's also causing agita for the business sector.

While there's still a lot of uncertainty about the global spread of H1N1—can it be contained? will it grow deadlier as it mutates?—there are some market precedents that offer a clue about how commerce and industry might be affected. The SARS outbreak that swept Asia in 2002 and 2003, as well as the more recent cases of avian flu in 2006, offer some insights.

TBM takes a look at which industries stand to win and lose from the would-be pandemic.

Winners
Pharmaceuticals. Someone could (ahem) make a killing here. Companies racing to develop a vaccine against the flu have two significant hurdles: They've got to manufacture a drug that targets the specific H1N1 strain, and they've got to get rid of vaccine producers' use of chicken eggs. Currently, manufacturers depend on eggs to cultivate the vaccine. Not only does that require a lot of eggs; it also takes a long time. This is why annual flu shots don't always protect you from getting the flu; scientists have to guess months in advance which strains are going to be in circulation, and they don't always get it right.

Thanks to the H1N1 scare, the FDA is likely to face intense pressure to green-light the first new vaccine method that comes down the pipeline, which means that method will be the go-to for this winter's flu vaccine, too. It will be a very lucrative position for the company that gets it right; the contenders are Novartis (NVS), Baxter Pharmaceuticals, and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

There's also the question of Tamiflu: Although scientists say the drug isn't a silver bullet against this strain, if the H1N1 outbreak turns into a full-blown pandemic (which seems increasingly likely), Swiss drug company Roche Holding AG could stand to benefit. Although there are pretty decent stockpiles of Tamiflu already in the system, panic-driven hoarding could drive up demand in the future, giving a boost not only to Roche but other companies that manufacture antiviral drugs.