Scientists Create Bird Flu Virus You Could Catch From a Sneeze| News
SCIENTISTS have published a paper explaining how they engineered an airborne contagious strain of the deadly bird flu virus H5N1. The publication follows eight months of debate over the safety of releasing what amounts to a guide to creating a global pandemic.
Dutch researchers explain in their paper, published in Science, precisely how they engineered bird flu strains that were contagious in ferrets - laboratory animals often used as proxies for people in influenza research.
As few as five mutations, generated by passing the virus from ferret to ferret just ten times, might be enough to confer on the bug the ability to infect new hosts through coughs and sneezes, the BBC reports.
Virologist Ron Fouchier, lead author of the report said: “We assume also in humans it would only take a low number of transmission events for these mutations to accumulate.”
The paper’s publication ended an acrimonious debate over whether such results should ever be released. Critics said they could help a rogue scientist create a superweapon. Proponents said the world needed to identify dangerous mutations so countermeasures could be designed.
