Researchers studying H5N1, also known as avian flu, have long recognized the virus’ disturbing similarity to a human strain of influenza that resulted in the 1918 global pandemic, which may have killed some 100 million people.
Avian flu has recently hit the airwaves again—this time, with a vengeance. In recent weeks, two teams of researchers—at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison—reported that they had successfully engineered a strain of the virus that could be transmitted through inhalation. (Thusfar, humans have been largely spared the wrath of H5N1. Unlike human influenzas, it is not readily passed by human-to-human contact.)
The work sheds important new light on the possible evolution of H5N1 into a lethal pathogen transmissible by human contact, but also opens the potential for malicious use of the information by an individual, group or government seeking to unleash a horrific global outbreak of the highly lethal disease.
The announcement has prompted some to harshly condemn the design of the study and, pointedly, the publication of research results. News agencies worldwide are asking how difficult it would really be for the H5N1 killer to be spread by humans.
In 2009, Carole Baskin, then at the Biodesign Institute, compared genetic reassortants of the 1918 influenza virus with the current H5N1 avian strain, identifying a disturbing genetic kinship between the two viruses and implying that a fairly straightforward pathway of mutation could turn H5N1 into a globally devastating pandemic.
The new results have shown such estimates to be frighteningly prescient. The studies have garnered breathless, front-page attention around the world, provoking a storm of controversy. Does such research imperil public health, perhaps providing would-be terrorists with a blueprint for a lethal bioweapon?
Biodesign researcher and infectious disease authority Roy Curtiss enters the fray, with an important opinion piece in Slate. “I don’t think that people who have a mindset to destroy themselves or anybody else have any of the talents or wherewithal or materials to succeed in any of these endeavors any time in the next 15 years.”
After that however, bets are off.
The truth is out there.
posted by RH
Each month, innovative research from the Biodesign Institute appears in the world’s premier scientific journals. Many such studies have graced the covers of these journals, showcasing Biodesign research ranging from water remediation to nanometer-scale structures built from DNA.
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