No superflu created
As it turned out on Jan. 27, Dr. Kawaoka’s virology team did create a more contagious form of bird flu — but did not produce a highly lethal superflu — as was feared — in contrast to what the Dutch team famously and controversially did last year.
Dr. Kawaoka revealed this in a commentary published online by Nature magazine. The virologist says his team’s virus had infected ferrets through the air, but that it did not kill any of them. Also, he says, “Current vaccines and antiviral compounds are effective against it.”
By contrast, the virus created by Dutch scientist Dr. Fouchier had both the high lethality of the H5N1 avian flu and the ability to transmit easily among ferrets.
Whether the ferret-adapted viruses actually have the ability to transmit from human to human can’t be tested in a lab, the scientists also point out.
Virulent virus
The H5N1 virus has an extraordinarily high death rate: since 1997, when the H5N1 virus was first identified, about 600 people have been infected and more than half died.
Current strains of the bird flu virus, or H5N1, are among the most virulent known human infectious diseases, having a human fatality rate from 30 percent to 80 percent, confirm Michael T. Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy and Donald A. Henderson, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Biosecurity.
The bird flu virus that has circulated in Asia for years does spread among people — but very rarely.
Recently, new outbreaks of bird flu have caused deaths in China and Indonesia but like all confirmed cases in the past, the recent cases involve people who contracted H5N1 from close contact with birds.
Right now the virus has persisted in the environment, infecting millions of birds every year and scientists have warned that a devastating pandemic could occur if it mutates to become more contagious in people.
But what mutations would make the virus more easily transmissible? And how hard, or easy, would it be for those mutations to occur?
Setting out to answer those questions, scientists began experimenting with bird flu, working with ferrets — considered the best model for studying flu because they contract flu and get sick in much the same way that people do.
Then in recent months, the teams in Rotterdam and Madison announced that they had produced a form of H5N1 with mutations that allowed it to “go airborne,” meaning that it spread through the air from one ferret to another.
This may mean that the virus could spread in the same way among people although this needs to be tested by more research because what works in ferrets does not always work in humans.
Scientists split over decision over deadly virus
Across the world, scientists are split over the research. Some praise it as important and urge that it be published; others say the experiments are so dangerous that they should never have been done.
A New York Times editorial called for the viruses to be destroyed or moved to government laboratories with the highest level of biosafety.
Those who support the research, including National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’s Fauci, say it may help explain how flu viruses that start out in animals adapt to humans and become transmissible — and therefore able to cause pandemics.
This information could help scientists and health authorities recognize viruses on the way to developing pandemic potential, Fauci says.
Others, like Michael Osterholm, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) director, believe “these studies are very important.”
The NIH applauded the decision to hold a moratorium on bird flu research. In a statement on Jan. 20, NIH director Francis S. Collins says, “We applaud the decision by these scientists, who have demonstrated great responsibility and flexibility in pausing their work to allow for a full dialogue about the risks and benefits of this research.”
The NIH, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other U.S. government agencies that conduct or fund this type of research will also abide by the moratorium, Collins says.
Collins urged the international scientific community to work toward a consensus on the future directions of such research to improve public health in light of international security implications, while ensuring the global influenza surveillance and research communities “can share through appropriate means critical information about the potential transmissibility of H5N1 influenza in humans.”
Understanding how influenza viruses become human pandemic threats “is vitally important to global health preparedness,” Collins says. “Such research helps us to understand the ability of the virus to cross between species and enables the development of tools for the prediction, prevention and treatment of outbreaks,” Collins adds.
Writing in Nature, Dr. Kawaoka himself argued it would be “irresponsible” and dangerous not to continue researching highly pathogenic bird flu viruses.
Writing in the journal’s blog, Scientific American executive editor Fred Guterl notes, “In the end, the best defense against deadly pathogens, natural or unnatural, may be knowledge—knowledge of the pathogens themselves, technologies to fight them quickly when they arise, and intelligence (the old fashioned gumshoe kind) about the people who might turn these pathogens against us.”
“The best defense against biotechnology is more biotechnology,” he says, quoting biologist Steven Block and pointing out the irony of bioweapons defense specialists now delaying work that was, in the first place, started with the aim of forestalling a doomsday pandemic.