A scanning electron microscope image of the avian flu virus. Details from recent bird flu virus studies could allow for the development of a devastating biological weapon, a U.S. federal panel said on Tuesday in defending its decision to seek limitations on the information’s release (PRNewsFoto/Zygote Media Group).
Flu Work Akin to Nuclear-Bomb Experiments, Board Says -- Global Security Newswire
Experts who made an unprecedented recommendation that bird-flu researchers hold back some details of their work justified the controversial decision on Tuesday, saying that the experiments were akin to the 1940s work on nuclear weapons or the first attempts at genetic engineering in the 1970s (see GSN, Jan. 26).
Members of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity said that bioterrorists or rogue governments could use details of the experiments to make a global weapon of catastrophic potential.
“We found the potential risk of public harm to be of unusually high magnitude,” they wrote in a statement published jointly in the rival journals Science and Nature.
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My Comment: I can just imagine the horror and fear that would strike the world if an easily transmittable virus with a mortality rate of H5N1 can have on the world. And what I find frightening from what I am reading, is that it appears that man .... with the proper lab resources .... can easily develop one.
1 comment:
The real killer is if the time between transmission and symptoms is in the weeks or even months range... If it is not, it will "only" kill in the millions or at best tens of millions.. I hope noone works on making it dormant for months...
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