Why would scientist create the most dangerous virus in the world and then tell the world where it is locked up, but they are even going further than that, they are going to publish how they made it…

The virus is an H5N1 avian influenza strain that has been genetically altered and is now easily transmissible between ferrets, the animals that most closely mimic the human response to flu. Scientists believe it’s likely that the pathogen, if it emerged in nature or were released, would trigger an influenza pandemic, quite possibly with many millions of deaths.

“Activity of extreme concern”
Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland

It is locked up at ROTTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS medical faculty building.

Some scientists say that’s reason enough not to do such research. The virus could escape from the lab, or bioterrorists or rogue nations could use the published results to fashion a bioweapon with the potential for mass destruction, they say. “This work should never have been done,” says Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute who has a strong interest in biosecurity issues.

Ron Fouchier calmly explains his team created it, in one of two studies that have triggered an intense debate about the limits of scientific freedom  that could portend changes in the way U.S. researchers handle so-called dual-use research: studies that have a potential public health benefit but could also be useful for nefarious purposes like biowarfare or bioterrorism.

NSABB chair Paul Keim, a microbial geneticist said “I can’t think of another pathogenic organism that is as scary as this one,” adds Keim, who has worked on anthrax for many years. “I don’t think anthrax is scary at all compared to this. The Virus can be “airborne”: Healthy ferrets became infected simply by being housed in a cage next to a sick one. The airborne strain had five mutations in two genes, each of which have already been found in nature, Fouchier says; just never all at once in the same strain. Ferrets aren’t humans, but in studies to date, any influenza strain that has been able to pass among ferrets has also been transmissible among humans, and vice versa, says Fouchier.

The specter of an H5N1 pandemic keeps flu scientists up at night because of the virus’s power to kill. Of the known cases so far, more than half were fatal. Researchers “have the full support of the influenza community,” Osterholm says, because there are potential benefits for public health. For instance, the results show that those downplaying the risks of an H5N1 pandemic should think again, he says.

Knowing the exact mutations that make the virus transmissible also enables scientists to look for them in the field and take more aggressive control measures when one or more show up, adds Fouchier. The study also enables researchers to test whether H5N1 vaccines and antiviral drugs would work against the new strain.

“We don’t want to give bad guys a road map on how to make bad bugs really bad”

But some scientists say the board’s debate comes far too late, because the studies have been done and the papers are written. “This is a good example of the need for a robust and independent system of PRIOR review and approval of potentially dangerous experiments,” retired arms control researcher Mark Wheelis of the University of California, Davis, wrote to ScienceInsider in an e-mail. “Blocking publication may provide some small increment of safety, but it will be very modest compared to the benefits of not doing the work in the first place.”

Scientists have long discussed whether to have mandatory reviews of dual-use studies before they begin, and given the global risks, some have even argued for some international risk assessment system for pandemic viruses. For instance, a proposal by four researchers from the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland would have classified Fouchier’s work as an “activity of extreme concern” that would have required international pre-approval.

But don’t worry! It’s only dangerous if it escapes from the lab somehow, like on the bottom of some disgruntled lab tech’s shoe