WHO 'deeply
concerned' by deadly flu research
Scientists altered a
deadly virus to make it even more contagious
© Jayanta Dey / Reuters
/ REUTERS
Health workers carry poultry for disposal at
Gandhigram village, about 22 miles west of Agartala,
capital of India's northeastern state of Tripura,
March 7, 2011, after an outbreak of H5N1 bird flu.
updated 12/30/2011 10:21:48 AM ET
LONDON —
The World Health Organization issued a stern warning
on Friday to scientists who have
engineered a highly pathogenic form of the deadly
H5N1 bird flu virus
, saying their work
carries significant risks and must be tightly
controlled.
The United Nations
health body said it was "deeply concerned about the
potential negative consequences" of work by two
leading flu research teams who this month said they
had found ways to make H5N1 into a easily
transmissable form capable of causing lethal human
pandemics.
The work by the
teams, one in The Netherlands and one in the United
States, has already prompted an unprecedented
censorship call from U.S. security advisers who fear
that publishing details of the research could give
potential attackers the know-how to make a bioterror
weapon.
The U.S. National
Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity has asked two
journals that want to publish the work to make only
redacted versions of studies available, a request to
which the journal editors and many leading
scientists object.
In its first
comment on the controversy, the WHO said: "While it
is clear that conducting research to gain such
knowledge must continue, it is also clear that
certain research, and especially that which can
generate more dangerous forms of the virus....has
risks."
H5N1 bird flu is
extremely deadly in people who are directly exposed
to it from infected birds. Since the virus was first
detected in 1997, about 600 people have contracted
it and more than half of them have died.
But so far it has
not yet naturally mutated into a form that can pass
easily from person to person, although many
scientists fear this kind of mutation is likely to
happen at some point and will constitute a major
health threat if it does.
Flu researchers
around the world have been working for many years
trying to figure out which mutations would give H5N1
the ability to spread easily from one person to
another, while at the same time maintaining its
deadly properties.
The U.S. National
Institutes of Health funded the two research teams
to carry out research into how the virus could
become more transmissible in humans, with the aim of
gaining insight on how to react if the mutation
occurred naturally.
The WHO said such
research should be done "only after all important
public health risks and benefits have been
identified" and "it is certain that the necessary
protections to minimize the potential for negative
consequences are in place."
The agency also said it was vital that new rules on
the sharing of viruses and scientific know-how were
enforced to ensure those countries at most immediate
risk from H5N1, mainly developing countries in Asia
such as Indonesia, Vietnam and others, would benefit
from advances in research.
During the H1N1
swine flu pandemic in 2009-2010, many developing
countries complained they had no life-saving
antivirals or vaccines to combat the new virus,
despite having made samples of the virus available
to researchers and pharmaceutical companies to
develop the medicines.
It is normally
laboratories in wealthy developed countries that
have the level of scientific expertise needed to
work on complex flu viruses, while bird, or avian,
flu viruses themselves often come from less well
developed Asian countries.
A new Pandemic
Influenza Preparedness Framework was agreed and
adopted by all WHO member states in May 2011 to set
rules for sharing flu viruses that have pandemic
potential, and sharing the benefits of the expertise
gained.
"WHO considers it
critically important that scientists who undertake
research with influenza viruses with pandemic
potential samples fully abide by the new
requirements," the U.N. agency said in its
statement.
