Security fears as flu virus that killed 50 million is recreated

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Thu, 6 Oct 2005 23:00:34 -0400

Security fears as flu virus that killed 50 million is recreated

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1585977,00.html

 

Security fears as flu virus that killed 50 million is recreated

 

Ian Sample, science correspondent

Thursday October 6, 2005

The Guardian

 

Scientists have recreated the 1918 Spanish flu virus, one of the

deadliest ever to emerge, to the alarm of many researchers who fear it

presents a serious security risk.

 

Undisclosed quantities of the virus are being held in a high-security

government laboratory in Atlanta, Georgia, after a nine-year effort to

rebuild the agent that swept the globe in record time and claimed the

lives of an estimated 50 million people.

 

The genetic sequence is also being made available to scientists

online, a move which some fear adds a further risk of the virus being

created in other labs.

 

The recreation was carried out in an attempt to understand what made

the 1918 outbreak so devastating. Reporting in the journal Science, a

team lead by Dr Jeffery Taubenberger at the Armed Forces Institute of

Pathology in Maryland shows that the recreated virus is extremely

effective. When injected into mice, it quickly took hold and they

started to lose weight rapidly, shedding 13% of their original weight

in just two days. Within six days, all mice injected with the virus

had died.

 

In a comparison experiment, similar mice were injected with a

contemporary strain of flu, and although the mice lost weight

initially, they recovered. Tests revealed that the Spanish flu virus

multiplied so rapidly that after four days, mice contained 39,000

times more flu virus than those injected with the more common strain

of flu.

 

The government and military researchers who reconstructed the virus

say their work has already provided invaluable insight into its unique

genetic make-up and helps explain its lethality. But other researchers

warned yesterday the that virus could escape from the laboratory.

" This will raise clear questions among some as to whether they have

really created a biological weapon, " said Professor Ronald Atlas at

the centre for deterrence of biowarfare and bioterrorism at the

University of Louisville in Kentucky.

 

Publication of the work and the filing of the virus's genetic make-up

to an online database followed an emergency meeting last week by the

US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, which concluded

that the benefits of publishing the work outweighed the risks. Many

scientists remained sceptical. " Once the genetic sequence is publicly

available, there's a theoretical risk that any molecular biologist

with sufficient knowledge could recreate this virus, " said Dr John

Wood, a virologist at the National Institute for Biological Standards

and Control in Potters Bar.