Bird flu study raises concerns
Friday January 27th, 2012
Controversial research into a new, engineered strain of bird flu has raised concerns about how such research should continue.
Scientists had engineered strains of H5N1, reportedly to establish how easily it could be transmitted between humans.
The research has now been suspended for two months because of international concern.
Writing in the latest edition of The Annals of Internal Medicine, experts now examine the consequences of the research and how the data should be shared.
The H5N1 virus that is currently circulating has killed about 60 per cent of the 500 plus confirmed human cases. However, it has not spread easily between humans.
The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) has recommended that the H5N1 research be published, but without detailed methodology, to reduce the risk of replication and purposeful misuse.
But the recommendation has divided the scientific community.
Dr Thomas Inglesby, CEO and director of the Center for Biosecurity of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, USA, says the potential consequences of an engineered human transmissible H5N1 strain are “stunning”.
If the newly engineered strain were to escape the laboratory and spread as widely as seasonal flu, it could endanger the lives of hundreds of millions of persons.
The harms of the research therefore outweigh the benefits, he says.
“If we are asking society to take the substantial and unprecedented risks associated with a human-transmissible H5N1 strain with a nearly 60 per cent case-fatality rate, we had better have a compelling, concrete, and realistic public health justification for it,” he writes.
If experimentation must continue, he said it should take the approach of smallpox research, which is very restricted.
However, Dr Andrew Pavia, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Utah Health Sciences Center and Primary Children's Hospital, said studies should proceed with proper safeguards so the medical world can advance its scientific understanding of influenza.
Dr Pavia said he agreed in general terms with the NSABB and says the creation of more dangerous pathogens in a laboratory has its purpose.
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