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Details of the Second Controversial Mutant Bird Flu Study Finally Published

Posted by samzenpus on from the terrorist-handbook dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The second of the two controversial bird flu studies once considered too risky to publish in fears that they would trigger a potentially devastating global influenza epidemic was published Thursday. The study describes how scientists created H5N1 virus strains that could become capable of airborne transmission between mammals. Scientists said that the findings, which had been censored for half a year, could help them detect dangerous virus strains in nature."

8 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Again. by bmo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >When they develop also develop the antidote or cure.

    No released research = no cure.

    Your move.

    --
    BMO

  2. The paper is published, the virus is unleashed? by BenJeremy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    WTF? That makes no sense. How does publishing a PAPER somehow unleash the virus? The research and work has already been done. Censoring or publishing the paper does nothing to affect, one way or another, whether the virus will mutate in this fashion.

    As for potential terrorism uses, there are plenty of other virulent diseases that can be weaponized, far easier, in crude labs.

    Frankly, I'd be more afraid of terrorists creating some disease that acts slowly, while spreading rapidly, across a narrow genotype. Think of the damage a virus that shuts down your kidneys completely, followed by other organs... over a couple of years time, while spreading as an airborne pathogen. Our health systems would be overtaxed, productivity would drop, it would be an economic disaster for the targeted areas.

    1. Re:The paper is published, the virus is unleashed? by bmo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >WTF? That makes no sense. How does publishing a PAPER somehow unleash the virus?

      Because the powers that be that make these decisions know nothing about virology and everything about politics.

      These are the same idiots that call terrorists that try to explode their underpants "sophisticated" on national television.

      Sophisticated is what the USSR was doing up until the collapse - making nuclear weapons that could explode at a desired height above ground within a couple of meters accuracy in 3 dimensions and wipe out an entire city.

      Yet according to them, we should wet their pants over a paper or exploding underpants. The mental gymnastics of this sort of doublethink are olympic-class.

      --
      BMO

    2. Re:The paper is published, the virus is unleashed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Posting AC because I'm talking about work (and stupid things we discussed as work).

      When Kawaoka published, my lab got together and examined what it would take to actually build the virus. It was surprisingly easy--and I'm an undergraduate intern in a bacterial lab (but I am studying viro, hence my interest). We could do it within our tiny budget with no problem, and the professor said he thought his students could do it with the help of a textbook. Order the genetic code in snippets, stitch it together, make plasmid, express it. You could do that in your bedroom after dropping a few thousand dollars on basic, easy-to-use lab gear and custom genetic fragments.

      I'm not defending the censorship, which has been demonstrated again and again was utterly without merit, but I can understand why it happened.

      Kawaoka and Fouchier suffered because, partially at their own hand, their papers were initially misrepresented. Somehow, somewhere, someone said that all of their ferrets died of flu. This simply isn't true. This was therefore repeated and repeated until it became an 'official' rumor, largely because this isn't a statistic typically associated with flu. Because this was marked as potentially dangerous virus, the paper was reviewed by the NSABB (National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity). NSABB examines papers that may be of 'dual use'--useful to research and useful to terrorists. The NSABB *does* have trained virologists, but since NSABB is primarily appointed by present NSABB members from a pool of people who are interested in NSABB work, it's full of people who are in the biosecurity mindset. The NSABB, by the way, is a purely advisory board with no powers whatsoever.

      Their recommendation was basically 'let's wait and think more about this.' Therefore, the now-known harmless nature of the viruses suddenly became a secret. Kawaoka and Fouchier could have prevent this controversy by releasing their conclusion with no details, but they decided to play by the rules and not talk about anything.

      The blame is spread around a fair bit, but it stands most firmly on the NSABB's hesitance and gag order (or gag suggestion, I suppose). Personally (and a number of prominent virologists seem to agree), I think that the media's need for a story is the central problem, as it both took the bad facts about the results and repeated them, ultimately passing them on to NSABB.

      If this had been a nasty virus, this hype would be justified. Yes, we can make plague, 1918 flu, etc, in the lab, but we know those viruses. Without knowing that, for instance, oseltamivir kills these new viruses very easily, we were potentially faced with a novel virus with zero data as to how we could respond to it.

      As to releasing the cure before the paper, that's actually possible: the novel from the virus and data from the paper could have been handed over to federal (probably military) labs, who could have worked on a vaccine.

      If you have some hours to burn, check out http://www.twiv.tv/tag/nsabb/ for a lengthy but decent coverage by a few of the best-know virologists.

  3. This is stupid. How easy is it for Al Qaeda or ... by WindBourne · · Score: 4, Insightful

    other terrorists to make this? IT IS TRIVIAL. In fact, it is CHEAP to do, esp. compared to all of their other ideas.

    So, how do you do it? You get allies to work in chicken farms in Indonesia, China, Vietnam, etc. These are all the places in which H5N1 variants are active. Wait until the farm has it (and right now, about 5-10% of the farms get it EACH YEAR). Once a place has it, take samples from the various chickens and take it back to Pakistan. spin down the blood, removing the blood cells and then inject it into a person (oddly, better to inject it into a child or old person; Avian operates different than other virus). Once they have it, expose them to normal airborne human flu. IOW, you are turning a human into a viral incubator. At that time, take samples of the person to hold aside, while you have 10-15 humans (knowing AQ, probably women) wait on the incubator. Spend a lot of time with them for the next 5-10 days. If somebody becomes infected, draw a number of samples from them, while allowing them to infect several other ppl. If the first set of waitors die from the infection, then you very likely have an airborne avian flu.

    At that time, keep the infections going for a bit, but ideally, add in swine flu. The spanish flu that stopped WWI, was apparently a combination of Avian, Swine, and Human flu. Regardless, the original mixture is enough, but if you go with several more levels, you can make it even more lethal.

    At that time, draw blood over the course of a couple of days from current incubators, spin it down to remove blood cells, mix, and then break apart into 1MM vials. That is enough to turn any human that is injected with it into a typhoid mary. Send them into airports, sporting events, malls, etc. Do it during the early phase when it is shedding, but not showing much symptoms of morbidity. Upon the person showing too many signs, pull them in, allow them to die in a quiet apartment and then dispose. Repeat with new person.

    So, why did I post this? To point out how trivial it is to create this. More importantly, to point out that AQ has some nice and easy means of doing this. The question is, what stops them? Their enmens (sp). These ppl will say no to this. At some point, as AQ gets to the end of losing their war, they will disregard and do this. At that time, I hope that we are ready. Otherwise, it is possible that the spanish flu will be nothing more than a sniffle compared to what this will do.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  4. Re:This is stupid. How easy is it for Al Qaeda or by bmo · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yet AQ cannot even get someone's underpants to explode correctly.

    --
    BMO

  5. Re:Again. by plover · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In my opinion, anyone purposely working on a more dangerous version of a deadly flu for very close to no reason, they should be shut down immediately.

    Well, it's a good thing they have a really good reason then. They want to prevent a pandemic flu.

    A pandemic is caused by a novel influenza virus that we are not immune to, and can spread itself quickly from infected host to uninfected human via airborne droplets.

    As you pointed out, viruses do not die. The host's autoimmune system either learns how to control the more lethal strains, or the host dies. And we've learned the host's autoimmune system can be trained by inoculating it with a strain of the virus that looks very similar to the lethal strain, yet does not contain the machinery that typically causes sickness or death. We call this process vaccination.

    We know the influenza virus lives for a long while in a non-human animal population (pigs, birds, horses), slowly mutating away from something our human autoimmune systems used to be able to recognize into a new form of the disease. This is called drift. (Reassortment is another mutational path that leads to new forms of the virus.) Judging by the regularity with which we are afflicted by pandemic flu viruses, this seems to happen about every 20 years. As we approach that 20 year mark, the occasional cross-species infection will occur, as the virus hops into some unlucky human who was in direct contact with the infected host. At that time, it's evident that there's a new form of the disease to which we're no longer immune.

    We also know that every so often natural mutations will confer the ability to become transmissible to humans via airborne droplets that are exhaled by a carrier. Once that happens, the virus is able to spread among humans very rapidly.

    So there are two things nature needs to create a new strain of pandemic flu: novelty and transmissibility. Once we see the novel form, it's time to create a vaccine that hopefully will lessen its impact before the time it naturally becomes transmissible on its own.

    But mutations are mutations. We don't know for certain that the mutant form that's transmissible is still similar enough to the novel form for our autoimmune systems to recognize them both (keep in mind that the non-lethal form cultured for the vaccine is already somewhat different from the lethal form.) So the researchers are trying to study the possible mutations so they can test and develop the vaccines before they're actually needed in the wild.

    tl;dr - they need to do this research, or a lot of people will die.

    --
    John
  6. RTFA! by PhilistineGuillotine · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Clearly those panicking did not bother to read even the abstract. Not a single ferret died from airborne transmission which is how this flu would spread. It's not even clear whether this new kind of flu would be more dangerous than the present wild type flu viruses, which kill many people every year. Why on Earth are there so many people freaking out about what these scientists have done?