Bird flu researchers suspend study of deadlier mutations

[The Straight Story]

Bird flu researchers suspend study of deadlier mutations

Researchers studying a potentially deadlier, airborne version of the H5N1 influenza virus, or bird flu, have voluntarily suspended their research for 60 days, according to a letter published in the journals Nature and Science on Friday.

Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical College in the Netherlands, Adolfo Garcia-Sastre of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, defend the research as crucial to public health efforts to detect when the bird flu virus might change in the wild in a way that could spark a pandemic.

But bowing to public concerns, there is widespread fear that the mutant viruses "may escape from the laboratories" and be used to create a devastating form of bioterrorism, they write.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/20/us-birdflu-search-idUSTRE80J1HU20120120

[Mojorabbit]

1. Another view

[In addition, our research project has direct practical
implications. Currently, our knowledge of determinants of
airborne transmission of influenza virus is virtually
nonexistent. If we knew which mutations and biological traits
can change the zoonotic H5N1 virus into a virus with major
public health impact, detection of specific mutations in
circulating avian viruses should trigger more aggressive
control programs than those employed currently. Moreover, if
a HPAI H5N1 virus has the potential to cause a future
pandemic, our last resort would consist of implementing
societal measures (such as quarantine and travel restrictions),
surveillance, vaccination, and the use of antiviral drugs.
Diagnostic tests, antiviral drugs, and prepandemic H5N1]
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/01/18/science.1218376.full.pdf

This week there has been an outbreak of bird flu in poultry in Bangladesh, two human cases in Egypt, and a cluster in Indonesia.
It could remain as it is or it could hit the magic combination retaining it's virulence and we would be in a world of hurt.
There has to be a meeting place on the research. I don't have the answer.