A US biosecurity committee is deciding whether crucial research on H5N1 bird flu is too dangerous to publish. The work shows a few mutations that might allow H5N1 bird flu to cause a lethal human pandemic.
The work was reported by 快猫短视频 in September but its formal publication has now been delayed by fears that the information could be dangerous in the wrong hands, including those of other researchers. Virologists argue that publication is essential for keeping watch on natural H5N1, which poses a far greater threat.
H5N1 kills more than half the people it infects, but cannot be readily passed from person to person. Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, reported at a in Malta in September that giving H5N1 two mutations known to adapt it to mammals, then passing the modified virus repeatedly between ferrets, led to further mutations and an H5N1 that was just as deadly but spread readily in airborne droplets. The five mutations involved have occurred separately in wild H5N1.
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The work was submitted to the journal Science, but has now been passed to the US , a committee of researchers which advises on whether published research 鈥渕ay be misused to pose a biologic threat鈥�. Its advice is not binding, but it is influential.
Human mistake
鈥淭he benefits of publishing this work do not outweigh the dangers of showing others how to replicate it,鈥� says of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, which has long warned of bioterror risks.
Someone might try to make it into a weapon, Ingelsby says, but a more likely threat is that more scientists will work with the modified virus, increasing the likelihood of it escaping the lab. 鈥淪mall mistakes in biosafety could have terrible global consequences,鈥� he says.
鈥淭he potential for escape of that virus is staggering,鈥� says D.A Henderson, also at the Center for Biosecurity, who spearheaded the eradication of smallpox. If a highly contagious virus with a 50 per cent kill rate got loose 鈥渁 catastrophe would result鈥�, he adds, especially given the world鈥檚 slow and limited ability to make vaccine. There is a precedent, he notes: the mild H1N1 flu that circulated before 2009 escaped in 1977 from a lab in Russia or China.
The Rotterdam team will not comment while the review is underway, but at the conference in Malta they said the experiment was approved by Dutch and international reviewers before it began, and no one suggested it should not be published. It was performed at the equivalent of BSL4 鈥� the highest bio-safety level.
Nature vs nurture
Researchers familiar with the work say the risks are overstated. 鈥淣ature is much more likely to come up with highly pathogenic influenza than we humans,鈥� says of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
of the University of Maryland in College Park says publishing will generate more biosecurity, not less. That鈥檚 because it will show which mutations to look for in natural H5N1 鈥� and why more such monitoring is needed. 鈥淗5N1 is ,鈥� he says.
鈥淎 bit of a wake-up call on flu might not go amiss,鈥� agrees Peter Doherty of the University of Melbourne in Australia, who for work in viral immunity and now works on flu. 鈥淗5N1 is mutating a lot, and virologists need to know the ferret study so they can watch for those mutations,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he real bioterror threat comes from nature itself.鈥�
