After months of fierce debate, a controversial flu virus study was released last week which could potentially open the door to bio-terrorism on a mass scale.
The National Institutes of Health funded study attempted to determine if the bird flu virus could be manipulated enough or mutate enough on its own to make it transmissible between humans, which it currently is not. The experiments were conducted on ferrets, who make good test subjects for such studies as they are susceptible to the virus, and sneeze when injected with it, allowing for testing of its airborne transmissibility.
Researchers genetically altered the virus using strains of older viruses that have popped up over the past hundred years, and then studied the interplay between the various strains as the infected ferrets came into contact with one another. What they discovered was that after as few as 5 mutations, the virus could become airborne and transmissible.
What the study showed is that there's a very scant possibility, but a possibility nonetheless that the virus could naturally mutate over time into one that is transmissible between humans, though possibly less lethal as a result. This does act as an early warning indicator, and highlights the need for a bird flu vaccine that could be produced in mass quantities, which several companies are now in the process of developing.
The real controversy though lies in the fact that the research could be used to purposefully mutate and release just such a virus amongst the public, with potentially devastating results. An outbreak of such a virus could kill millions of people according to researchers.
Not only was their risk in publishing the research of the methodology behind these mutated strains, there was risk in deliberately mutating this virus in the first place, as there was the possibility the strain could've escaped its cozy lab confines and found its way into the public domain, and the lungs of the people in it.
The research came under such fire in fact that it was halted for 2 months in the face of the backlash and concern over it, and several prominent groups other scientists were firmly against the publication of the study results.
"I think it was really important work that should be done, but I think it should have limited distribution," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance at the University of Minnesota. "There are many more papers that are on their way that will enable the rest of the world to do this work in a more comprehensive and easier way and I think we're ill prepared to deal with this" he added.
Was there any merit in releasing this study to the public? Should these experiments even have been conducted in the first place? Share your thoughts below.
