Controversial Bird Flu Research: the Story so Far

Ever heard of the Influenza A virus subtype H5N1? Perhaps you may know it by its other common name – bird flu.  This virus evolved on chicken farms in China in the mid-1990s and by 2006 it had spread across Eurasia and as far as the UK and Nigeria. It is endemic and evolving in poultry in China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Egypt. Since its emergence, it has killed 335 of the 584 people known to have caught it. This number is relatively small because the virus does not spread efficiently between humans. On the other hand, when it does spread, it can be very deadly: nearly 60 percent of infected humans died from the virus. For years now, research has suggested that any mutations that enhanced the virus’s ability to spread among humans would simultaneously make it less deadly.

Scientists Prove Otherwise

Working independently, two scientists - Yoshihiro Kawaoka from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center, in the Netherlands – were able to prove that the virus can mutate to spread easily among humans while remaining as deadly.  Ron Fouchier and colleagues passed a mutant H5N1 virus repeatedly among ferrets. Ferrets are used in flu studies because they react to flu viruses in a similar way to humans.  The virus picked up more mutations, which let it spread through air like ordinary flu, while staying just as lethal. However, the mutation made on the virus by Yoshihiro Kawaoka and colleagues made it spread easily through ferrets, though it barely made them ill.

Controversy Over Publication

 When the two experiments were submitted to journals (Yoshihiro submitting to Nature while Fouchier submitted to Science) for publication, it raised a lot of controversy. The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), a top US biosecurity committee in December of 2011, asked that the full details not be published, for fear bioterrorists would recreate the mutant virus. The board also feared that publishing the details would prompt more laboratories to work on the viruses, making an accidental release more likely. It advised the journals to publish the works in redacted forms and that a means created to release full details to other scientists only on a need-to-know basis. Some virologists argued that such a mutation has yet to occur in nature and that if we helped the virus past that barrier artificially, then release it, we could be making a problem for ourselves that would not otherwise have happened.

However, proponents countered that the research shows H5N1 can evolve this way naturally and that threat of a global pandemic, were this mutated strain to arise in nature, is far greater than the threat of bioterrorism. Understanding what combination of mutations could transform H5N1 into a human pandemic virus, helps epidemiologists know what to watch out for in the wild, and gives them the advantage on preparing countermeasures.

So What Happens After?

The push to develop a mechanism to disseminate the full papers to researchers and health officials on a need-to-know basis was deemed impractical.  In February of 2012, the WHO threw its weight on the issue and recommended a full publication of both papers. Following that, on 30^th of March, 2012, the NSABB revised its earlier decision and also recommended full publication of the papers.

The NSABB said that its decision was informed by a new government policy that could facilitate earlier review of ‘dual-use’ research that can both benefit the public and be misused to threaten public health, agriculture or the environment. The policy, released on 29 March, 2012 makes it compulsory for the first time for all US federal research agencies to assess research proposals for their dual-use risk in cases where the research involves one of a list of dangerous pathogens specified by the policy. The dual-use rules came into force immediately, and agencies were given 90 days to report existing projects of dual-use risk to their parent agencies.

So far it appears the dust is beginning to settle down over the publication of the papers and the complete details of the experiments containing the mutations that made the virus more virulent will be made public. If the details are eventually made public, do we have any reason to be scared that the knowledge may be misused? Is there any chance a terrorist could make this virus and release it? The possibility seems very unlikely because the virus will also threaten the terrorist’s own people. Also, only a handful of labs are equipped enough to carry out such a research.