Manmade Birdflu? Publish or Not to Publish?

[Atheist-Lite]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/2 ... 18673.html

Bird Flu: Scientists Develop New Strain Of H5N1, Avian Influenza, That Could Kill Millions

It sounds like the setup for a Hollywood thriller: scientists in a lab create a virus as contagious as the flu that kills half of those infected. We're safe as long as the virus remains locked up, but if it escapes or gets into the hands of bioterrorists, it has the potential to become a pandemic and kill millions around the world.

But this isn't the latest summer blockbuster. According to New Scientist magazine, researchers in the Netherlands studying H5N1 -- commonly referred to as the bird flu or avian influenza -- have created a strain of the virus that's easily passed between mammals, and it's just as lethal as the original virus.

According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, the H5N1 virus has infected more than 500 people in more than a dozen countries and is known to kill around 60 percent of those that become infected.

Ron Fouchier, a researcher at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, led the team that successfully created the mutation. Fouchier presented the findings at a conference in Malta in September and, according to NPR, is now seeking publication of his results.

But some in the scientific community are debating whether or not that's a good idea.

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[Atheist-Lite]

News which could save the planet should be more popular on this site?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16279365

Bird flu: Research row as US raises terror fears

The authors of two controversial bird flu studies have reportedly agreed to a US request to redact key details after a government advisory panel suggested the data could be used by terrorists.

The papers show how a bird flu variant can pass easily between ferrets.

Editors at the journals Science and Nature say they will not agree to the redactions until they are assured the data will be accessible to researchers.

A spokesman for US health authorities said such a system was being prepared.

At least one set of scientists have already rewritten their paper in light of the recommendation, Science reports.

Albert Osterhaus told Science his team "completely disagreed" with the recommendation of the panel, the the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB).

But Mr Osterhaus, who believes the information should be made widely available, said an editorial explaining his team's "genuflection" to the panel is a condition of the paper's publication in Science.

A second research team at the University of Wisconsin, Madison is also reluctantly submitting a revised paper to Nature, a university spokesman confirmed to Science.

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[Warren Dew]

If the terrorists have secret biolabs, my bet is that they're working towards smallpox, not flu.

[Atheist-Lite]

If the terrorists have secret biolabs, my bet is that they're working towards smallpox, not flu.

My bet is the coming retrenchment in US big pharma will lead to a massive increase in the amateur bio-hacking community over in the states, where there will be plenty of surplus hi-spec machinary going on sale cheaply too.

[Seth]

Gotta get on that Cipro stockpile right away...

[Atheist-Lite]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spi ... 82,00.html

Controversy Brews Over Scientists' Creation of Killer Viruses

The 17th floor of the Erasmus Medical Center in the Dutch city of Rotterdam certainly doesn't look like the kind of place that could pose a threat to global security. A disco ball hangs from the ceiling in the hallway in front of the elevators, and bar with a golden beer tap stands in the corner of the conference room.


Everything in this 1960s high-rise building evokes the charm of student life, including the door to Room 17.73, which is covered with colorful stickers. But some view the scientist who sits behind that door as a threat to mankind.

Ron Fouchier, a giant of a man at more than two meters tall (6'6"), has dark circles under his eyes. His life has been stressful lately. "They want to paint me as a homicidal idiot," he says heatedly. He is referring, most of all, to a powerful institution from the United States, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB).

In his work Fouchier, a virologist, uses the methods of a branch of research that is as booming as it is controversial. Synthetic biology employs targeted manipulation through genetic engineering to construct new organisms. The 45-year-old's research has even set off alarm bells at the World Health Organization (WHO). This week, Fouchier will appear before an international panel of experts at the WHO to explain his experiments.

Fouchier is attracting so much attention because he has created a new organism. And although it is tiny, if it escaped from his laboratory it would claim far more human lives than an exploding nuclear power plant.

The pathogen is a new mutation of the feared bird flu virus, H5N1. In nature, this virus, which kills one of every two people infected, has not yet been transmitted from humans to humans. So far, a relatively small number of people have caught the virus from poultry, and 336 people have died.

Scientific Wake-Up Call

For years, experts feared that the adaptable virus could soon mutate from being primarily a bird killer to a highly infectious threat to humans. But as the years passed and this did not happen, many hoped that it might not even be possible, and some of the fears subsided.

But now Fouchier's experiments have given the research community a wake-up call. The scientist performed only a few targeted manipulations on the genetic material of the ordinary H5N1 virus and, to make the virus even more dangerous, he repeatedly transmitted it from one laboratory animal to the next.

"In the end, the virus became airborne," the Dutch scientist explains. From then on Fouchier's ferrets, animals that most closely resemble humans when it comes to influenza, transmitted the virus to each other without direct contact, through tiny droplets of saliva and mucus.

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[Atheist-Lite]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2 ... -full.html

Bird flu research to be published in full

Two studies reporting what makes the H5N1 bird flu virus transmissible in mammals should be published fully, with no details left out, say flu experts meeting at the World Health Organisation in Geneva.

They say the benefits to public health outweigh the risks of bioterrorism, but they concede that publication should be delayed so scientists can "engage in public communication" aimed at preventing "unnecessary anxiety".

The decision to publish comes just a few short weeks after the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), the US's top biosecurity panel, asked these virologists not to publish the research in detail.

The NSABB worried that bioterrorists would use the information to make dangerous, transmissible H5N1 – or that other, less careful researchers would repeat the work and let the virus get away.

Why the difference? The researchers themselves have always wanted to publish without restriction, and of the 22 people who met in Geneva, fully half were leading flu researchers, and none of the rest were biosecurity experts concerned with bioterrorism.

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[Pappa]

Publish!

[Atheist-Lite]

Publish and be damned.