Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Deadly H5N1 Flu Studies To Stay Secret... For Now

Posted by Soulskill on from the those-birds-are-not-trustworthy dept.

Edsj writes "A spokesman for the World Health Organization announced that an agreement had been reached, after a debate, to keep details secret of the controversial work about the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu virus until deeper risk analyses have been carried out. The scientists who made the study, led by Ron Fouchier, still want to release the full paper at some future date for public viewing, but for the time being, the NSABB got what it wanted." The moratorium will be extended "probably for several months."

1 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Cat is out of bag anyway by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As was brought up couple weeks back in SciFri, the study abstract and rough process which has been talked publicly is enough for skilled laboratory to try same. Passing the virus just trough five ferret infections to get it spreading over air is so simple and little that it might happen anyway naturally over time without human intervention.

    All we can do and should do is start developing vaccines now and not wait until we would be too late. It takes about 6 months to develop and produce enough vaccine. Thinking that the lethality of H1N5 is about 50% compared to smallpox ~40% it's going to be enormous panic to get it done if any preparations were not done beforehand.