Flu scientists agree to 60-day ‘pause’ in bird-flu research
he world’s leading influenza scientists on Friday said they will stop certain experiments on H5N1 “bird flu” for 60 days while the research community considers how much information about the highly lethal virus should be released to the public.
The decision comes a month after the U. S. government asked the journals Science and Nature to withhold details on how two laboratories made strains of H5N1 that are as deadly as the “wild” version but may be far more transmissible to people.
“We are doing this to give a little bit of breathing room to the infectious disease field, international organizations and governments,” said Ron A. M. Fouchier, a virologist in the Netherlands whose research paper is one of the ones the U.S. government wants redacted. “It is not a time for panicky actions.”
Fouchier got 38 other flu scientists around the world to sign a letter, published online by Science, announcing the self-imposed moratorium.
For the next two months, work on the lab-created bird flu will stop. There will be no studies of whether the currently approved H5N1 vaccine protects against the new strains — something that both pharmaceutical companies and public health agencies eagerly want to know. Analysis of wild H5N1 strains causing illness around the world will continue, however. So far this year there have been fatal human cases in Cambodia, Indonesia and Vietnam.
“I think it had to be done,” Robert G. Webster, a virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, said of the moratorium. “We have to decide on the way forward. These papers are game-changers in the influenza field.”