A group of the leading virus experts in the US has called for new, permanent restrictions on research in the face of a new genetically engineered flu virus that could kill half the population of the world.
Scientists are currently observing a 60-day moratorium on research into the bird flu virus, after two groups found a way to make it infectious through airborne transmission.
An outbreak of this virus could be worse than the 1918 Spanish flu that killed tens of millions of people, warned Michael Osterholm – who has led research into previous dangerous outbreaks – at a public meeting on censorship in science in New York on Thursday night.
"Frankly, I don't want a virus out there that, even if it was 20 times less lethal, would still be the worst influenza pandemic in history," he said.
Professor Osterholm is a member of the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, which in December asked the journals Science and Nature not to publish the full research on the virus.
Bird flu, or H5N1, has so far infected 583 people according to World Heath Organisation figures, mostly in South East Asia, and killed 344 – though it is believed the proportion of fatalities to infections might be lower, as some may have caught the virus but not been hospitalised.
It can currently only be caught by close exposure to infected birds.
However, the new research demonstrated that the virus could be mutated, through genetic manipulation and other methods, into a form that was transmitted between ferrets in airborne droplets from coughs and sneezes.
Ferrets are considered a good model for human-to-human virus transmission.
The NSABB said this posed a huge risk to the world.
"If this virus were to escape by error or by terror, we must ask whether it would cause a pandemic," said NSABB chair Paul Keim in an interview published in Nature this week.
"The probability is unknown, but it is not zero. There are many scenarios to consider, ranging from mad lone scientists, desperate despots and members of millennial doomsday cults, to nation states wanting mutually assured destruction options, bioterrorists or a single person's random acts of craziness."
Professor Osterholm said he considered the new virus a worse threat than the return of smallpox.
"I wouldn't like to see smallpox get out of the lab, but if it did it wouldn't overly concern me," Osterholm said. "We could contain it. The same thing is true with Sars. But influenza would scare the hell out of me, because it is the most notorious, the 'Lion King' of transmission."
"Once it's out there, it's gone, it's worldwide."
However, he said the research could have positive results, such as finding a better vaccine, or improving virus detection in the early stages of a pandemic if it emerged naturally. He said virus surveillance at the moment was "like a whole lot of broken smoke alarms".
The meeting agreed that restricting research, and access to research data, would have bad consequences for science, because new advances often come from unexpected places.
Several speakers said the publication of redacted data should only be a temporary measure until a better solution was hit upon.
Professor Arturo Casadevall, from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who is also on the NSABB board, said he had originally been against restricting research but had been persuaded it was necessary.
"If it is the worst case scenario half the people you know will die, and half the people you don't know will die," he said. "If it is two orders of magnitude (100 times) lower, you are looking at 7 million deaths.
"These viruses were generated in the laboratory … when these things get out and they recombine with existing strains, I think it will be very unpredictable, and this is a risk I think is very high."
However, he said research should continue in a more regulated way.
"Since 1997, we have had sporadic occurrences of this organism," he said. "We did not know it had the potential for mammal to mammal transmission. Now that we know, humanity is under threat and this work needs to go on."
Dr Laurie Garrett, from the Council on Foreign Relations, said any move to control or limit research into influenza would also limit the ability to protect against it if it emerged naturally.
But she added that the more laboratories around the world worked on the virus, the greater the risk it would escape – even in the US, there were hundreds of breaches of quarantine in the highest-level labs.
And she said the spectre of a biological weapon based on the virus was raised "very, very high".
She warned that if scientists agreed a way to move forward among themselves, without consulting more widely, they may discover the issue will "blow up" once the public is made more aware of it.
Alan Ruldolph, from the US Department of Defense's Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said information on the virus was "relatively uncontrollable", and the focus on bird flu should be on how to prepare for and respond to an outbreak.
It is estimated more than 1,000 scientists already know the details of the censored research.
Professor Peter Palese from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine said the moratorium should end and research should continue.
He said the risk of the virus spreading to humans, and the level of danger it posed, had been vastly overestimated.
"All evidence we have now suggests H5N1 isn't easily transmitted to humans, and these experiments don't make it more likely," he said. "When do you stop being afraid?"
Virus experts from around the world are to meet in Geneva this month, at a meeting of the World Health Organisation aimed at assessing the risks, and benefits, of research into the bird flu virus.
Comments
3 February 2012 3:34PM
Ummmm, 1% of 50% of the world's population is 35 million, not 7 million. What gives? Are only 20% of human beings people?
3 February 2012 3:38PM
"Professor Osterholm is a member of the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity" In other words the US has already weaponised this virus family and they don't want a cheap and effective vaccine! IMHO there can be no other reason to suspend research on H5N1. Unless it can be proved that some labs are not biosecure. On a case by case basis.
3 February 2012 3:44PM
This is what happens when paranoia gets out of control, and policy is dictated by people who thought that Outbreak was a dcoumentary
3 February 2012 3:46PM
It is estimated more than 1,000 scientists already know the details of the censored research.
Seems that nuclear mutually assured destruction has been topped as a threat. Sod's third law, the one he got the Nobel for indicates that if it can happen, it will happen.
Whichever way you look at it the future doesn't seem very rosy.
3 February 2012 3:50PM
Watched Contagion a couple of days ago. I'm gonna go build me a hermetically sealed bubble.
3 February 2012 4:07PM
I'd assume that if one thousand scientists already know of the technique then it isn't a secret anymore. When you consider how susceptible scientists are to having their skills subverted or bought for unethical purposes, climate-change deniers and weapon's developers just the most obvious, then you can bet there'll be more than just a few "in the know" who'd be happy to pass on the knowledge. Then, of course, there are the secret bioweapon labs every major world power has, including maybe especially America, where the option to reduce the world population by half would be "on the table" if critical world resource depletion threatened a complete collapse.
The analogy of losing "half of everyone you know and half of everyone else" is misleading too, a weaponised virus would also likely come with an anti-virus (unless an anarchist had it), and even though the chances are high that the released weapon would mutate the safeguards for "selected populations" could be enhanced with a variety of other measures including isolation. Should a pandemic begin I would very much like to know how nuclear workers around the world were faring, presumably those countries whose nuclear workers were unaffected would be appear to be the guilty parties - the worst could be guessed if every nuclear worker across the globe somehow had immunity (world-wide conspiracies are not always works of fiction).
3 February 2012 4:12PM
Could this be used as a weapon?
3 February 2012 4:15PM
There's such a weird kind of hubris in this - the idea that humanity is so insulated from nature that only we can destroy ourselves. This virus was "engineered" in the sense that "wild" virus was injected into ferrets, then artificially passed on to other ferrets. It took, I believe, ten passes before it was able to spread all by itself. This same process is going on in the wild - just (hopefully) slower.
And what we learned is:
It only takes five mutations (all already out there in the wild, individually) to make bird flu readily mammal to mammal transmisable.
The comforting idea that H5N1 that adapted to humans would necessarily be much less deadly is bullshit.
Surely that's something rather more worth worrying about?
3 February 2012 4:30PM
Oh shit!
3 February 2012 4:31PM
At some point a lot of us are going to die of a serious pandemic, it's absolutely inevitable and will very likely bring about the end of civilisation as we know it.
If it's not bird flu it'll be HIV going airborne or something else.
You can't stay ahead of nature forever, ultimately something will out-evolve you and wreck your species.
3 February 2012 4:43PM
This article reports on a public debate concerning censorship in science that was held in New York last night. The debate was not about the threat of a global pandemic, which is a separate and ongoing debate. A few of the issues already discussed in the debate about the threat of a global pandemic are summarized below:
Nature | Preventing pandemics: The fight over flu
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v481/n7381/full/481257a.html#/lynn-klotz-amp-ed-sylvester-worry-about-lab-infections
D. A. Henderson: The ultimate biological threat
"The H5N1 influenza strain poses a potential biological hazard far more serious than any we have ever known. It is a virus that is capable of killing half its victims, a proportion greater than that for any other epidemic disease. Were that coupled with the transmissibility of a pandemic flu virus, it would have characteristics of an ultimate biological weapon unknown even in science fiction (see Nature 480, 421–422; 2011). We should not publish a blueprint for constructing such an organism."
Lynn Klotz & Ed Sylvester: Worry about lab infections
"... Along with the two labs that created a potentially contagious form of H5N1, at least 40 others worldwide investigate deadly, highly contagious pathogens not currently present in human populations... We have analysed the likelihood of escape from 42 labs, using 1% as the estimated probability of an escape from a single lab in a single year... Our analysis shows that the probability of an escape from at least one of 42 labs in a single year is 34%; within less than 4 years, the chance of escape reaches 80%... In comparison, the average time between the three natural influenza pandemics in the last century was about 30 years (1918, 1957 and 1968). We are creating a risk that is much greater than that posed by nature..."
Richard H. Ebright: Mitigate the risks of release
"... We need to implement a system of mandatory prior review of research directed at increasing a pathogen's virulence, transmissibility or ability to evade countermeasures. We also need to re-evaluate, and preferably terminate, biodefence expenditures on research directed at creating and assessing new biothreats, as opposed to addressing existing biothreats. Creating and assessing new threats rarely increases security..."
Mike Serfas said:
"The only real control we have is to agree with our friends around the world not to fund the creation of new and deadly viruses in the first place,,,"
Viktor Muller said:
"... the risk of lab release (as argued by Klotz & Sylvester and by Ebright above) is very real: it is not so much a question of whether, but rather that of when."
3 February 2012 4:54PM
is this the beginning of another scare campaign?
the 1918 flu was started by the contractor who injected soldiers going to Europe.
that was owned by Rockefeller.
and who started the HIV pandemic?
3 February 2012 5:12PM
Maybe its meant to wipe out 50% of the population. Preferably from the non white segment. Is that not precisely what "DR DEATH" revealed he had been working on when called before the reconciliation commitee in South Africa.
It would solve global warming and a few other intracable problems (energy,food and water depleation) at a stroke. Spooky or what.
3 February 2012 5:21PM
...and Donald Rumsfeldt was on the board of the Genentech company that made the anti-viral vaccination Tamiflu, more smoke and mirrors to rob people through fear. Check out who started Genentech and for what reason, it's all about MONEY!!!
3 February 2012 5:22PM
Are you speaking from personal experience?
3 February 2012 5:39PM
So here we have it, yet another scare in a long line scares that we the general public have been forced to endure.
Are we supposed to believe that science is actually on the side of the common people or is this some kind of pre text early warning for yet another form of Swine Flu that might I say seemed to flop has awareness grew that a simple dose of Vitamin C or D not some cocktailed vaccine was the winning element in that scenario.. Hopefully I am wrong!
Douglas Quaid
3 February 2012 5:41PM
A good point. With the most diverse parts of the planet being overun, exploited and destroyed in the process the chances are that somewhere, maybe the Amazon or some other biodiverse region, our fate as a plague specie is already sealed. Perhaps it's a bacterium living on the back of some invertebrate or rare mammal, but you can bet that at the rate the little buggers evolve it could easily come from anything, anywhere.
3 February 2012 5:43PM
so maybe we should be focusing on space colonisation rather than who's currency is going to kick who's currerncy
or what about an underwater dome?
I've protected myself from attack from solar flares by erecting a Faraday cage around my remote cave somewhere in the outback and that cost everything I own so I don't care about economic collapse. The cage is made from a 20 year supply of baked bean tins so I can eat for a while but air borne bird flu? I was working from the chicken angle - I thought it would be flightless...damn
No wonder everyone's getting into Horror fiction - trying to kid themselves it's all just a story.
3 February 2012 5:46PM
"..The United States issued an unusual apology Friday to Guatemala for an experiment conducted in the 1940s in which prisoners, mental patients and soldiers were deliberately infected with sexually transmitted diseases, including syphilis and gonorrhea".
Here's the statement issued jointed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius google.it.
That's what the Nazis were accused of, isn't it?
There are obviously psycho scientists out there all the time.
We just don't get to hear of them till the damage is done.
People without a vestige of conscience.
Vioxx springs to mind. Some 140,000 people killed by a pain killing drug in 4 years on rigged research and lots of lying marketing plus a corrupt FDA,
It wouldn't have come out but for whistleblower Dr David Graham.
How is it so few people have heard of it and how few questions are asked about it
No one even went to jail. 140,000!!!!! it is beyond belief....
3 February 2012 5:47PM
Damn you, Colonel Sanders!
3 February 2012 5:50PM
Next they'll be telling us that we can't take a bottle of water into the airport, and have to pay triple what it costs at the supermarket.
But surely the paranoia would never go that far - would it?
3 February 2012 6:04PM
That's very rude of you.
As it happens though, the answer is yes. If I were to contract HIV tomorrow, I would die without medical intervention. I have no natural immunity to HIV so in evolutionary arms race terms, HIV has out-evolved me - and you, and all humans that science is aware of.
A highly conservative estimate says that 99% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct, there's no reason for us to believe that humanity will ultimately prove to be any different. This is especially true since we appear to be in the habit of actively seeking out deadly strains of viruses in laboratories, which I'm not aware any of the aforementioned 99% were in the business of dong.
Nice try at having a pop though.
3 February 2012 6:23PM
Who was on the board of the company that started Spanish Influenza, HIV and the Black Death?
It was those dastardly Smurfs wasn't it. I knew they weren't to be trusted.
I think you're weird by the way.
3 February 2012 6:24PM
It would be a bit of a crap biological weapon. Haha, America, I hit you with airborne influenza, take that! Only, a few weeks later it's me and my mates who are all dying of it.
I guess there may be some people who are crazy enough to want to take the chance of killing half the world's population to make a point, but I doubt it.
(Though I agree of course that's it's better not to take that risk.)
3 February 2012 6:36PM
I was having a laugh not a pop! Good point about 99% of species already done and dusted, makes me feel rather special at long last to be in the 1%. Have a good weekend and remember, there is always room for a beer!
3 February 2012 6:37PM
Just because we can do it doesn't mean we should do it. Why would anyone want to create a virus so lethal that it could wipe out half the people on earth? What's the matter with these 'scientists'?
3 February 2012 6:47PM
>1000 scientists now how to make a deadly strain of humanized bird flu that could very easily wipe out 50% or more of the population of the world and you are not concerned?
This is not like nuclear weaponry it doesn't require huge infrastructure to produce this stuff - only technology that is widely available. If you are not concerned you are deluded.
3 February 2012 6:47PM
give us a link
3 February 2012 6:58PM
Doesn't a ban on research kinda make it hard to develop vaccines and cures?
3 February 2012 7:01PM
They'll need to be careful not to accidently contaminate some vaccine batches with whatever material they have. You know, like Baxter did three years ago with live avian flu (even though stringent biohazard handling procedures should have rendered this impossible) as exposed by Jane Burgermeister who used to write for The Guardian at one time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baxter_International#2009_avian_flu_contamination
3 February 2012 7:04PM
cauli --is this the beginning of another scare campaign?
the 1918 flu was started by the contractor who injected soldiers going to Europe.
that was owned by Rockefeller.
and who started the HIV pandemic?
Rothschild ,lol
3 February 2012 7:14PM
"But she added that the more laboratories around the world worked on the virus, the greater the risk it would escape – even in the US, there were hundreds of breaches of quarantine in the highest-level labs."
"Professor Peter Palese from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine said the moratorium should end and research should continue.
He said the risk of the virus spreading to humans, and the level of danger it posed, had been vastly overestimated."
If a bug that can wipe out even 25% of those it infects exists, and you have the ability to get rid of it, then just get rid of it. Especially if you made the damn thing and it only lives in your lab. Why screw around. I'm sure there are potential positives that can be raised in defense of continuing research, but do those positives offset the potential to kill BILLIONS? History is filled with countless instances where things couldn't possibly go wrong...until they did. Look at the nuclear power plant disaster in Fukushima. A mag. 9 quake right off the coast? A 50' tsunami? Nah, we're fine.... Uh-oh.
I had a few questions that maybe someone wants to chime in on. The strain of virus produced is capable of being transmitted through the air between ferrets. Is this ferret to ferret strain capable of directly infecting a human without any changes to its makeup? How difficult were the steps to make it an airborne contagion and are such steps reasonably likely to occur as a natural event without human intervention?
3 February 2012 7:15PM
Sounds like security through obscurity! Utter, total idiocy. Only fools…
You cannot prevent research - you can only drive it underground - underground and out of proper control measures.
and then without openly available research and the possibility of publicly available vaccines we'll have the disaster that allows those that control the data the power of life and death over each and every one of us.
This is not a safe situation.
This scientist may know about viruses, but he does not know about security, for that consult Schneier
3 February 2012 8:05PM
Response to ridergk, 3 February 2012 7:14PM:
I'm not a virologist, but security, including biosecuruty, is one of my fields of study. Let's keep this simple.
"Is this... strain capable of directly infecting a human without any changes to its makeup?"
Probably. No-one really knows. Ferrets are considered a good model for human disease studies, but tests on human subjects are considered unethical.
"How difficult were the steps to make it an airborne contagion(?)"
That depends on who you ask. The researchers, no doubt, claim this is hard science. Other opinions vary. Probably the hardest part is avoiding being killed by your experiment.
"... are such steps reasonably likely to occur as a natural event without human intervention?"
Yes, but this is only one possible evolutionary path of many.
3 February 2012 8:11PM
Depends on what you mean by "biosecure". The virus exists in a Rotterdam university, the Erasmus Medical Centre. It is under lock and key, but not armed guard. The janitor is unlikely to leave with it, but someone with a pistol and a pair of balls isn't going to have a problem.
Also it's a bit late to prosecute (or simply advise how they improve their procedures) if they release a highly contagious pathogen, isn't it?
3 February 2012 9:19PM
As long as it doesn't jump the species barrier and infect rabbits ...
3 February 2012 9:22PM
First bird flu scare in 2 years. The Guardian is slacking.
3 February 2012 9:32PM
i'd be more worried about the open source dna building
http://openpcr.org/
they are treating it like building software from modules and any software engineer will tell you the risk of that are huge...
truly terrifying and exciting at the same time
just a pity that the state of human morality is not advanced enough to cope with these advances ( eg we all accept lying as part of life and even think it's ok for our leaders to routinely use )
and with the recent research showing that dna can be transferred from plant to plant without sexual reproduction the so called kill switches are instantly made redundant
3 February 2012 11:22PM
davidsouthafrican
the comment had a suggestion to google it.
here is a link anyway http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkup/2010/10/us_apologizes_for_1940s_experi.html
4 February 2012 12:07AM
Give it a couple of decades and we'll be downloading our brains into computers and inhabiting bodies made out of nanobots. Nature can suck my balls!
4 February 2012 12:20AM
Two aspects: the Biosafety level which I understand is Level 3. Inadequate now that mammalian transmission has been achieved. I also have zero tolerance. Further work must be undertaken at a Level 4 facility.
As to Erasmus' BioSecurity: according to my understanding the topic is secret so I would assume that there ARE armed guards! Whilst it is speculation, the threat of Bio-Terrorism tends to sharpen minds even in enlightened countries like Holland whose police, I note, are routinely armed.
But perhaps you have better contacts.
With regards to release. Remember the pathogen is already out in the wild! if it can be mutated in the lab it can mutate naturally. Thus not a matter of "if" only a matter of "when." Hence the need to continue the research to develop an effective vaccine against the sort of virus H5N1 will be, if it acquires the necessary mechanisms to ramp up its contagious capability. And not necessarily the mechanisms induced by this experiment. There will be others... The latter is something that I suspect the Americans are secretly working on and successfully too. Hence their strange insistance on regulating the research i.e. shutting down lines of inquiry that might nullify their weaponised work.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/22/health/security-in-h5n1-bird-flu-study-was-paramount-scientist-says.html
4 February 2012 12:43AM
It's only because this flu was invented in a lab and not in the Top Gear studio. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
4 February 2012 1:53AM
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4 February 2012 2:23AM
The Gaurdian UK & other NEWS outlets are tools to psychologically manipulate
the public reading such stories. Right now I'm right down the bottom of this page,
where the comment box is & just below it is the AMAZING cure for everyone.
How delightfully convenient.
Well THERE"S NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT THEN!!!
WRONG!
The problem stems from the fact that Vaccines are not to be trusted. In fact
you can trust Vaccines about as much as what comes out of a politicians mouth.
Do some research on vaccine fraud & the companies behind them.
In a nut-shell, the vaccine will either not work, maim you or even kill you.
If you want a chance to survive the New Bio-engineered Flu, look up
The Bob Beck Protocol or MMS2, 2 different approaches to eradicating
viruses.
You might ask WHY these cures for FLU, CANCER & even AIDS is not made public
through News papers such as this one. Because you & they are ALL Brainwashed.
This whole system will fall soon, because lies cannot hold up life forever.
4 February 2012 2:56AM
Gene fiddlers.
4 February 2012 6:45AM
Like it has for crocodiles?
4 February 2012 7:55AM
Since bird flu crops up now and again in China, what's the likelihood that the US military will be keeping their lid on this extremely virulent strain until the time in "necessary" in the medium-long term future - no bombs, no spy drones, not even any economic sanctions. Wipeout.
And the sad thing is, a lot of us here will rejoice.
4 February 2012 9:05AM
Where exactly is the world going to?
4 February 2012 9:11AM
Read a headline a week or so ago "Second death in China from bird flu in amonth"
How many people are there in China, how many people have died of ordinary flu in the same period.
Crying wolf can be dangerous - as the boy himself found out.
4 February 2012 9:13AM
ready in time for the olympics?@ icarusty this link http://web.oie.int/wahis/public.php?page=weekly_report_index shows that bird flu is in south africa, australia ,sri lanka right now all a bit of a slog from china, ohh funny how there has been no more about the schmallenberg virus