It was frightening to read this article describing the work of two independent research teams that have both created the nightmare pandemic bug that experts have been worried about for the last decade--a killer bird influenza virus (H5N1, as opposed to the H3N1 "swine flu" pandemic virus).

We've discussed this in the past. H5N1 ("bird flu") is highly lethal--up to 50% mortality in people--but fortunately, these strains have been very poor at spreading between people so the virus has never gotten a running start in any human population so far. But these scientists have created H5N1 strains that retain their original lethality but now easily pass back and forth between ferrets, which almost always means it will also be highly contagious in people, too.

The chair of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity who is reviewing the scientific papers submitted by these teams and who has worked extensively with anthrax says:


If this virus ever got out into the wild somehow, it would be far, far worse than the scenario we watched unfold in the movie Contagion. Another scary thing is, these are academics who actually publish their results. There's no telling what kinds of bugs military scientists have conjured up over the years. At least those bugs are under military guard--at least the ones in the US. In the former Soviet Union and other places...?