Engineered Avian Flu Could Kill Half the World’s Humans

This is n’t a movie . It ’s not a classic Science Fiction book . This is the real news report of a scientist who created a virus with the powerfulness to litter the Earth with billions of dead bodies .

OK , now breathe . Or peradventure don’t — the computer virus is airborne .

In his Netherlands laboratory , virologist Ron Fouchier was experimenting with the avian flu computer virus to see how it could become even more virulent . ( crimson flag . ) His enquiry involve diffuse it throughout a universe of ferrets , and he noticed that as the computer virus reproduced , it conform to spread even quicker . ( RED FLAG . ) Not worried about ferret flu ? Previous enquiry has point that any strains of influenza that can lapse between ferrets can also pass between humans . ( RED FLAAAAAAAAAG . ) Ten coevals later , his campaign had create an airborne form with the baron could vote out half the human universe . ( RED FUCKING FLAG , DUDE ! )

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Fouchier , who conducted his enquiry at Erasmus Medical Centreadmittedthat the new straining is “ probably one of the most dangerous viruses you may make . ” He presented his work at theinfluenza league in Maltathis September . Now he desire to publish his study in a scientific daybook , so those creditworthy for react to bioterrorism can be prepared for the worst fount scenario . Seems like a no - brainer , right ? Not exactly . The enquiry has set off alarum among co-worker who are urging Fouchier not to publish , for fear the formula could wind up in the wrong hired man . Some question whether the enquiry should have been done in the first place . Fair point !

Typically H5N1 affects birds , but about 10 year ago it emerged in humans , first in Asia , then traveling around the world . Human case are rare — about 600 total — but they are deadly , killing about half the people infect .

The reason avian flu is n’t more common is because it ’s not an airborne transmission — at least it has n’t been until now . With the un - engineered variation , you have to touch something that ’s been contaminate to get brainsick . But Fouchier ’s version is airborne , meaning being in the vicinity of the disease and breathing it in would be enough to sign it . It ’s as contagious as the human seasonal flu , but much more pernicious . And now Fouchier wants to publish how he made it that way .

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His fellow bioterrorism expert are consider that ’s maybe not the best idea , because then anyone who got their hands on the paper could reproduce Fouchier ’s results . Microbial geneticist Paul Keim , an splenic fever expert and chair of theNational Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity(which will decide whether Fouchier can publish ) toldScience Insider :

I ca n’t think of another morbific organism that is as scary as this one . I do n’t retrieve anthrax is scary at all compared to this .

But Fouchier and a smattering of other scientists who have do similar experiments believe publication would help the scientific community prepare for an H5N1 pandemic . Not print , they say , could allow researchers in the dark as to how to reply to an outbreak . But a pandemic made possible in the first place by the publication create a routine of a crybaby and testis question — and that ’s why the NSAB has an unenviably difficult decision to make .

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