With a headline of "China claims first anti-bird flu vaccine", does that mean they've developed a flu shot that kills the birds? Or should that have been "anti-bird-flu vaccine"?
It's a common frustration of mine with common English usage. It has gotten to the point where it is generally considered "more correct" to use "anti-bird flu" to mean something that is "anti" in regards to "bird flu", despite the fact that it wantonly violates the POLS.
As long as you don't have to answer to an editor that has an ingrained preferred way to represent that, though, there's no reason you yourself can't hyphenate bird-flu before attaching anti- to it.
