Bird flu censorship 'raises terror threat'
Source: Agencies |
December 22, 2011, Thursday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
ANY number of laboratories worldwide could engineer bird flu viruses into bioterror weapons capable of causing a human pandemic, and US government efforts to censor research might only increase the risk that rogue elements may give it a try, experts have warned.
Experts say an unprecedented request by the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity for two leading scientific journals to withhold details of research into H5N1 bird flu is unlikely to block anyone already intent on evil.
Yet the fact that the potential for H5N1 to be deliberately engineered into a highly pathogenic form has become headline news might put fresh thoughts into the wrong minds.
"Anything like this has the potential to trigger ideas in some maverick," said Peter Openshaw, director of the centre for respiratory infection and Britain's Imperial College.
"There are many crazy people out there, and there are also people who are fixed on some idea at the extreme end of the political norm. Both groups have the potential to cause harm."
H5N1 bird flu is deadly in people directly exposed to infected birds.
Since first detected in 1997, about 600 people have contracted it and more than half have died. But so far, it has not mutated into a form that can pass easily from person to person.
Scientists have been trying to figure out which mutations would give H5N1 the ability to spread easily from one person to another, while maintaining its deadly properties. The US National Institutes of Health funded two teams to carry out research into this.
The aim was to gain early insight on how to contain the public health threat if such a mutation occurred naturally, but now the NSABB says it wants publication of the studies censored.
Wendy Barclay, an expert in flu virology at Imperial College, said stopping the Science and Nature journals publishing full data would simply set an uncomfortable precedent.
"The exact mutations were not particularly novel or unexpected so anyone with a reasonable knowledge of influenza virology could probably guess at them," she said.
Experts say an unprecedented request by the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity for two leading scientific journals to withhold details of research into H5N1 bird flu is unlikely to block anyone already intent on evil.
Yet the fact that the potential for H5N1 to be deliberately engineered into a highly pathogenic form has become headline news might put fresh thoughts into the wrong minds.
"Anything like this has the potential to trigger ideas in some maverick," said Peter Openshaw, director of the centre for respiratory infection and Britain's Imperial College.
"There are many crazy people out there, and there are also people who are fixed on some idea at the extreme end of the political norm. Both groups have the potential to cause harm."
H5N1 bird flu is deadly in people directly exposed to infected birds.
Since first detected in 1997, about 600 people have contracted it and more than half have died. But so far, it has not mutated into a form that can pass easily from person to person.
Scientists have been trying to figure out which mutations would give H5N1 the ability to spread easily from one person to another, while maintaining its deadly properties. The US National Institutes of Health funded two teams to carry out research into this.
The aim was to gain early insight on how to contain the public health threat if such a mutation occurred naturally, but now the NSABB says it wants publication of the studies censored.
Wendy Barclay, an expert in flu virology at Imperial College, said stopping the Science and Nature journals publishing full data would simply set an uncomfortable precedent.
"The exact mutations were not particularly novel or unexpected so anyone with a reasonable knowledge of influenza virology could probably guess at them," she said.
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