tetano
Editor, Senior Moderator
Handle with care
The possibility that H7N9 avian influenza may evolve sufficiently to cause a pandemic has scientists turning again to controversial research ?they must be careful how they justify the risks taken.
07 August 2013
The H7N9 avian flu virus first reported in China in March has so far infected at least 134 people, and killed 43 of them. Thankfully, there are no signs yet that it can easily be transmitted between people ? instead it is sporadically being caught by humans through contact with chickens and other fowl.
Researchers now want to make genetically engineered versions of H7N9 that are more transmissible and pathogenic in mammals. In a Correspondence published jointly this week in Nature and Science (see page 150), 22 scientists, including Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, argue that such research can help to assess the ?pandemic potential? of H7N9. The dilemma is that should such engineered strains be accidentally or deliberately released from a lab, they could spark a flu pandemic.
The announcement is likely to prompt some replay of last year?s debate over the creation by Fouchier and Kawaoka of lab strains of H5N1 that could transmit between ferrets. And it offers the first test of some of the review and oversight structures put in place for this ?gain-of-function? flu research. As this journal has said before, scientists who push for such research should be wary of over-selling the benefits to public health, at least in the short term, as a way to justify the risks taken.
..
http://www.nature.com/news/handle-with-care-1.13505
The possibility that H7N9 avian influenza may evolve sufficiently to cause a pandemic has scientists turning again to controversial research ?they must be careful how they justify the risks taken.
07 August 2013
The H7N9 avian flu virus first reported in China in March has so far infected at least 134 people, and killed 43 of them. Thankfully, there are no signs yet that it can easily be transmitted between people ? instead it is sporadically being caught by humans through contact with chickens and other fowl.
Researchers now want to make genetically engineered versions of H7N9 that are more transmissible and pathogenic in mammals. In a Correspondence published jointly this week in Nature and Science (see page 150), 22 scientists, including Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, argue that such research can help to assess the ?pandemic potential? of H7N9. The dilemma is that should such engineered strains be accidentally or deliberately released from a lab, they could spark a flu pandemic.
The announcement is likely to prompt some replay of last year?s debate over the creation by Fouchier and Kawaoka of lab strains of H5N1 that could transmit between ferrets. And it offers the first test of some of the review and oversight structures put in place for this ?gain-of-function? flu research. As this journal has said before, scientists who push for such research should be wary of over-selling the benefits to public health, at least in the short term, as a way to justify the risks taken.
..
http://www.nature.com/news/handle-with-care-1.13505