Bird Flu Virus Appears Man Made in Scientific Journals

Publications about bird flu virus was deliberately created by human appeared in scientific journals. One of them was published in the Nature journal.

Four months ago, the U.S. government banned the publication of two studies of how scientists create bird flu virus that is easily spread. However, the current revised version of the journal is published with the agreement of U.S. government.

Nature journal published a revised version on Wednesday (2/5/2012) online. The paper was revised on purpose because U.S. government worried about the possible misuse of information by bioterrorist who want to make a virus for the purpose of terror. On the other hand, the researchers argue that publish research results in detail is important to deal with the threat of malicious viruses.

Meanwhile, the second paper of more controversial, because it involves a more dangerous virus will be published later in Science journal.



Some experts question more fundamental thing than the possibility of misuse of virus information by bioterrorist. Does make version of the bird flu virus that could potentially harm is a good idea? Dr. Eric Toner of the biosecurity center of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said research like this can indeed be useful for studies related to how to handle this bird flu. However, there are questions related to the calculation of risk versus benefit.

A lot of bird flu attacked poultry in Asia since a few years ago. Some cases even be found in humans, although they are infected from birds. Scientists are worried that due to mixing of virus with nature, new virus variants will emerge that able to move between people. These conditions can lead to pandemic flu.

Recent research conducted by two teams of scientists, one in the laboratory in U.S. and one in Netherlands. They created a virus that spreads easily in ferrets, which are like human. The scientists wanted to investigate what genetic mutations that facilitate the spread of the virus. That way scientists can identify the presence of harmful viruses and act quickly to prevent a pandemic, as well as testing vaccines and drugs.

Yoshihiro Kawaoka of University of Wisconsin-Madison, who head the research published in Nature journal explains, he and his colleagues created a hybrid virus of bird flu and human flu, and identified a mutation that enables it to spread through the air between the ferret. The result, none of ferrets was dead. The researchers also found evidence that vaccines are now capable to protect humans from hybrid virus.

The researchers said they did not know whether four identified mutations would make bird flu that exist in nature become more easily transmitted. However, according to them, a study has been done hope could help scientists to find other mutations and understand what cause the spread of bird flu in humans.