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Work on Deadly Bird Flu to Be Released

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    Posted: February 18 2012 at 6:27am
Despite Safety Worries, Work on Deadly Flu to Be Released
By DENISE GRADY
Published: February 17, 2012

The full details of recent experiments that made a deadly flu virus more contagious will be published, probably within a few months, despite recommendations by the United States that some information be kept secret for fear that terrorists could use it to start epidemics.

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The announcement, made on Friday by the World Health Organization, follows two months of heated debate about the flu research. The recommendation to publish the work in full came from a meeting of 22 experts in flu and public health from various countries who met on Thursday and Friday in Geneva at the organization’s headquarters to discuss “urgent issues” raised by the research.

Most of the group felt that any theoretical risk of the virus’s being used by terrorists was far outweighed by the “real and present danger” of similar flu viruses in the wild, and by the need to study them and freely share information that could help identify the exact changes that might signal that a virus is developing the ability to cause a pandemic, said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who represented the United States at the meeting.

The natural form of the virus being studied has infected millions of birds, mostly in poor countries in Asia, and although it does not often infect people, it has a high death rate when it does. If the virus were to develop the ability to infect humans more easily, and to spread from person to person — which it almost never does now — it could kill millions of people.

“The group consensus was that it was much more important to get this information to scientists in an easy way to allow them to work on the problem for the good of public health,” Dr. Fauci said. “It was not unanimous, but a very strong consensus.”

But the United States was not part of that consensus, Dr. Fauci said. He said he still agreed with the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, which recommended in December that the research be published only in a redacted form, for safety reasons.

The experiments involve a type of bird flu virus known as H5N1. Of about 600 known cases, more than half have been fatal. The exact death rate is not known, however, because some deaths may go uncounted and mild cases may go undiagnosed. But whatever the death rate turns out to be, most researchers think it will be significantly higher than that of any flu virus, even the notorious 1918 flu, which had a death rate of about 2 percent. The 1918 virus, however, was highly contagious, and killed as many as 50 million people worldwide.

The H5N1 work, paid for by the National Institutes of Health, was done by two separate research teams, at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Research on the viruses was voluntarily suspended by the researchers last month because of the uproar it provoked. News of the experiments, which were conducted last year, set off public fears that the virus could accidentally leak out of a laboratory, or be stolen by terrorists, and result in a devastating pandemic. Scientists have been divided, with some urging that the results be published in full, and others saying the research is so dangerous that it should never even have been done, much less published.

The moratorium on the research and its publication will be extended, probably for several months, according to Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the health organization’s assistant director general for health security and the environment, who spoke at a news conference after the two-day meeting in Geneva.

Dr. Fukuda said that the moratorium would give researchers and officials an opportunity to provide better information to the public about the research and its importance, and would also give safety experts a chance to assess the conditions in which the work is being done.

For now, he said, the group agreed that it was “best that these viruses should stay where they are — in well-run high-security labs.”

The researchers in the Netherlands and Wisconsin made genetic changes in the virus that made it transmissible through the air among ferrets, an animal considered a good model for the way flu behaves in humans. It is not known whether the new virus would be equally contagious in people.

Bruce Alberts, editor of the journal Science, said his journal and another one, Nature, had been planning to publish redacted versions of the research in mid-March. Now, Dr. Alberts said, they will wait until it is considered appropriate to publish the full versions. He said he was surprised that the group meeting in Geneva had reached a decision so promptly.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote carbon20 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 20 2012 at 5:01am
hi
 
not sure about this,
 
part of me thinks that not even the most fanatical terroist would let something
 
like this out that would  kill even there own people,then another part of me says
 
"12 Monkey's"
 
 i hope every  one has seen that movie
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.🖖

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 20 2012 at 8:06pm
Yep, freeky movie!
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote jacksdad Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 20 2012 at 10:35pm
That's weird - I've been thinking about that movie in this context recently too. Great minds...
"Buy it cheap. Stack it deep"
"Any community that fails to prepare, with the expectation that the federal government will come to the rescue, will be tragically wrong." Michael Leavitt, HHS Secretary.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote carbon20 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: February 21 2012 at 2:14am
hi all
 
ever scince that movie was released i  have thought it was a possibilty,i have mention it before
 
"HOT ZONE "(RICHARD PRESTON) is worth a read ,
 
and "THE EARTH ABIDES"(G.R STEWART) is a great read.
 
read it about 30 years ago
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote carbon20 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 03 2012 at 4:32am
hi allWink
 
good news /bad news
 
 
Mutant bird flu 'less lethal', says paper's author

(AFP)–7 hours ago < style="margin: 0px; left: 0px; top: 0px; width: 70px; height: 15px; visibility: ; : static;" id="I1_1333452437613" title="+1" ="-1" ="0" marginHeight="0" ="https://plusone.google.com/_/+1/fast?=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fhostednews%2Fafp%2Farticle%2FALeqM5i-mr7ZkAYzu5W_dFDY3ejdjTOiiQ%3FdocId%3DCNG.0c65eda86da0c2637bc414347c9be156.601&size=small&count=true&hl=en&jsh=m%3B%2F_%2Fapps-static%2F_%2Fjs%2Fwidget%2F__features__%2Frt%3Dj%2Fver%3DSvSTGk8PZnM.en.%2Fsv%3D1%2Fam%3D!K2t8zmDaIyaNjPbXTQ%2Fd%3D1%2F#id=I1_1333452437613&parent=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&rpctoken=770996237&_methods=onPlusOne%2C_ready%2C_%2C_%2C_resizeMe%2C_renderstart" Border="0" width="100%" allowTransparency="true" name="I1_1333452437613" marginWidth="0" scrolling="no" ="0">

LONDON — The author of a paper on a mutant bird flu strain said experts agreed to publish it only after he explained that the virus was "much less lethal" than previously feared.

A panel of US science and security experts on Friday said two papers on mutant viruses should be published after all, reversing its earlier decision to withhold key details.

Professor Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, author of one of the papers, told journalists in London that his revised version addressed fears that the paper's findings could be used by bioterrorists.

Friday's announcement came after the revisions to the papers were reviewed by the nongovernmental US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB).

The US experts had previously opposed publishing the research -- which showed how an engineered H5N1 flu virus could pass easily in the air between ferrets -- over fears it could end up in the wrong hands and result in a deadly man-made flu pandemic.

Fouchier said his revised version made clear that the mutant virus is "much less lethal" than the NSABB had previously believed.

"I did say that it's one of the most dangerous viruses, and it's the truth, because these viruses are a little scary," Fouchier said.

"If they go airborne they can cause pandemics and pandemic flu has killed millions of people."

Some members of the advisory board understood that the ferrets in the experiment had all died as a result of being infected, leading to the paper being blocked.

"The information was in the original paper but perhaps it was not as clear as it should have been," Fouchier said.

"Our virus does not kill ferrets when it is in aerosol. This was in the original manuscript but it was not spelt out."

The NSABB faced criticism after it ruled unanimously in December that a pair of US-funded studies, one by a team from Wisconsin and the other led by Fouchier, should not be printed without heavy edits of key details.

Bird flu is believed to kill more than half the people it infects, making it much more lethal than common strains of the seasonal virus.

According to the World Health Organization, there have been 573 cases of H5N1 bird flu in humans in 15 countries since 2003, with 58.6 percent resulting in death.

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Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.🖖

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote carbon20 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: April 05 2012 at 2:55pm
hi all Cry
not sure if this is a good idea, very scary if you ask me
 
Hybrid of H5N1 bird flu and swine flu viruses created
  • It was created for "pandemic preparedness"
  • Secret life of plants revealed: They can talk
  • A SCIENTIST who worked on a "super virus" to make it spread easily between humans has defended his actions and revealed how he created it.

    Professor Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said he made a hybrid flu strain by merging H5N1 bird flu with the "swine flu" virus that caused a pandemic in humans in 2009, The Guardian reports.

    Science magazine described the new strain as a virus "that could change world history if it were ever set free".

    Prof Kawaoka said the experiments were "important for pandemic preparedness” and emphasised the need for countries to stockpile vaccines to combat bird flu.

    Working in a high-security laboratory, Prof Kawaoka said he wanted to find out whether the bird flu virus could pick up genetic mutations in the wild that would allow it to adapt to humans and spread rapidly like seasonal flu.

    Sign%20up%20%20for%20your%20free%202%20month%20trial

    He said bird flu does not spread well between people because it cannot bind to cells in the throat and nose, where it can be coughed and sneezed out.

    However, through a series of experiments in ferrets, he created a strain that helped the virus latch on to and infect cells in the throat.

    Passing the flu from one ferret to another, the team discovered the H5N1 strain mutated into an airborne virus. Until now, that was the key factor in the virus limited it to something unlikely to cause a pandemic.

    Prof Kawaoka was speaking for the first time about the experiments after the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) called for sections of his work to be deleted amid fears a terrorists might use the information to create a biological weapon.

    They then demanded virologists researching the work don't release full details of their success.

    The teams that wrote papers about the new virus reluctantly agreed to redact data from manuscripts to be submitted to scientific journals Science and Nature for publication.

    However, an advisory board reversed and approved Prof Kawaoka's account of the experiments to be published in full.

    Last September a Dutch research team led by Ron Fouchier at Rotterdam's Erasmus Medical Centre also created a mutant version of the H5N1 bird flu virus that could spread among mammals.

    Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.🖖

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