Dutch university lab wants to publish instructions for creation of killer avian flu
Posted: December 20, 2011 at 12:51 pm by Roz Potter in Infectious and Communicable Disease, Pandemic FluFrom the Independent: Link
Excerpts:
A deadly strain of bird flu with the potential to infect and kill millions of people has been created in a laboratory by European scientists – who now want to publish full details of how they did it.
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For the first time the researchers have been able to mutate the H5N1 strain of avian influenza so that it can be transmitted easily through the air in coughs and sneezes. Until now, it was thought that H5N1 bird flu could only be transmitted between humans via very close physical contact.
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What makes H5N1 so dangerous, though, is that it has killed about 60 per cent of those it has infected, making it one of the most lethal known forms of influenza in modern history – a deadliness moderated only by its inability (so far) to spread easily through airborne water droplets.
Some scientists have privately questioned whether such research should have been done in a university department that does not have the sophisticated anti-terrorist security of a military facility. They also point out that experimental viruses kept in seemingly secure laboratories have escaped in the past to cause human epidemics – such as a 1977 flu outbreak.
“There are people who say that the work should never have been done, or if it was done it should have been done in a setting where the information could be better controlled,” said the source close to the biosecurity board.
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The study was carried out by a Dutch team of scientists led by Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, where the mutated virus is stored under lock and key, but without armed guards, in a basement building.
Dr Fouchier, who declined to answer questions until a decision is made on publication, said in a statement released on the university’s website that it only took a small number of mutations to change the avian flu virus into a form that could spread more easily between humans.
Of Note