Controversial research published last night shows the threat to humans posed by repeated outbreaks of new bird flu viruses, it was claimed.
Critics accused the Chinese scientists who undertook the research of irresponsibility.
The project at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Harbin, China, sought to show how flu viruses could mix with each other to create highly infectious epidemic strains.
The scientists, reporting in Science, tell how they mixed combinations of the bird flu H5N1 and the human H1N1 virus and tested them on guinea pigs.
They say the most infectious versions proved to be non-lethal to the laboratory animals.
The researchers say the "potential" next steps would involve ferrets, which are more like humans. But these experiments were halted after an international moratorium on certain kinds of flu research.
A former UK government chief scientist Lord May of Oxford told the Independent newspaper: “The record of containment in labs like this is not reassuring. They are taking it upon themselves to create human-to-human transmission of very dangerous viruses. It’s appallingly irresponsible."
The work was published as the new H7N9 bird flu virus continued to claim victims in China.
The virus, thought to have been spread through poultry markets, has now been confirmed in 128 patients and claimed 26 deaths, Chinese authorities say.
* Another new virus resurfaced in Saudi Arabia yesterday.
Authorities reported five deaths and another two patients critically ill from the new coronavirus. So far the virus has killed 16 people and infected eight others, including several cases in the UK.
H5N1 Hybrid Viruses Bearing 2009/H1N1 Virus Genes Transmit in Guinea Pigs by Respiratory Droplet. Science 2 May 2013
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