Details of the Second Controversial Mutant Bird Flu Study Finally Published 78
An anonymous reader writes "The second of the two controversial bird flu studies once considered too risky to publish in fears that they would trigger a potentially devastating global influenza epidemic was published Thursday. The study describes how scientists created H5N1 virus strains that could become capable of airborne transmission between mammals. Scientists said that the findings, which had been censored for half a year, could help them detect dangerous virus strains in nature."
Again. (Score:1, Flamebait)
"could help them detect dangerous virus strains in nature."
But since it's "woowoo scary" we bury this research in spite of the benefits.
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BMO
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>Censored for a half year
Read the summary much?
How long does censorship have to last before it's "safe" to release research?
What about next time? A year? Two? Never?
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BMO
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Re:Again. (Score:5, Insightful)
>When they develop also develop the antidote or cure.
No released research = no cure.
Your move.
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BMO
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The people doing this research are also capable of creating vaccines, etc.
[citation needed]. Would appreciate if you can find citations showing their capability to produce quantities large enough if needed in a pandemic.
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The people doing this research are also capable of creating vaccines, etc.
[citation needed]. Would appreciate if you can find citations showing their capability to produce quantities large enough if needed in a pandemic.
Wonder-Twin powers - deactivate logic! Form of: internet argument!
As far as actual capabilities of the researchers go, the creation of a vaccine is accomplished by creating a mutated form of the virus that triggers an autoimmune response without causing the harmful symptoms. The science is exactly the same as creating any other mutated form, such as one that can be spread via mammalian respiration, a.k.a. the paper they authored.
And the capability to create has nothing to do with the capability to mass-pr
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The people doing this research are also capable of creating vaccines, etc.
[citation needed]. Would appreciate if you can find citations showing their capability to produce quantities large enough if needed in a pandemic.
As far as actual capabilities of the researchers go, the creation of a vaccine is accomplished by creating a mutated form of the virus that triggers an autoimmune response without causing the harmful symptoms.
And developing that something without harmful symptoms is so easy? I doubt it, otherwise I'd have heard of vaccines for AIDS and Ebola for quite a long ago.
If you know they've already developed the vaccine for the mutated H5N1 virus, why not provide the citation I requested? Until I hear about it, I'll stay with my opinion: better share all the info about the virus for increased chances somebody develop the vaccine quicker if/when needed and/or to know where to look if detecting a possible strain that muta
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Giving out the data will be of limited value. It's more a matter of luck of the draw if anyone else comes out with a vaccine sooner than the labs in the loop, if anyone comes out with a working one at all.
However, by giving out the instructions on how to build the virus, it is a CERTAINTY that a malicious group with routine laboratory skills could build the virus.
Providing the enemy with diagrams to build a main battle tank out of readily available parts from a scrapyard, in order to hope that you can sp
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And developing that something without harmful symptoms is so easy? I doubt it, otherwise I'd have heard of vaccines for AIDS and Ebola for quite a long ago.
Of course it's not easy, which is why they need this research to help understand the mutated forms of H5N1. And as you are no doubt aware, influenza is a lot simpler disease to deal with than HIV with its constant rounds of mutation, and Ebola which kills so quickly.
I'll stay with my opinion: better share all the info about the virus for increased chances somebody develop the vaccine quicker if/when needed and/or to know where to look if detecting a possible strain that mutated in the wild.
No argument from me there. We need this research to lessen the impact of the next round of pandemic flu.
And the capability to create has nothing to do with the capability to mass-produce. If that were true, you'd still be waiting for George Lucas to make you your very own VHS copy of Star Wars in his VCR. (Spoiler: by the time he gets around to recording yours, Chewbacca will have shot first!)
Haha... funny! Only serious: it's stupid for the context of mass producing vaccines!
Until someone fully developed a vaccine, do you have an
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Giving out the data will be of limited value.
A matter of opinion. While I'll respect yours, it doesn't mean I have to agree with it.
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By the way, vaccine != cure.
In my opinion, anyone purposely working on a more dangerous version of a deadly flu for very close to no reason, they should be shut down immediately. They're turning "Let's prepare for 'what if' by studying potential
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Security through obscurity can quite easily result in far greater loss. I would much rather have years of research done on dangerous pathogens and risk someone developing a weapon based upon it than have someone develop a dangerous pathogen no one's ever seen before without anyone who's an expert at studying virus propagation and mutation because someone got scared and banned the research.
In the former case, you already have experts on hand who are intimately familiar with the virus, giving them a leg up o
Re:Again. (Score:5, Interesting)
In my opinion, anyone purposely working on a more dangerous version of a deadly flu for very close to no reason, they should be shut down immediately.
Well, it's a good thing they have a really good reason then. They want to prevent a pandemic flu.
A pandemic is caused by a novel influenza virus that we are not immune to, and can spread itself quickly from infected host to uninfected human via airborne droplets.
As you pointed out, viruses do not die. The host's autoimmune system either learns how to control the more lethal strains, or the host dies. And we've learned the host's autoimmune system can be trained by inoculating it with a strain of the virus that looks very similar to the lethal strain, yet does not contain the machinery that typically causes sickness or death. We call this process vaccination.
We know the influenza virus lives for a long while in a non-human animal population (pigs, birds, horses), slowly mutating away from something our human autoimmune systems used to be able to recognize into a new form of the disease. This is called drift. (Reassortment is another mutational path that leads to new forms of the virus.) Judging by the regularity with which we are afflicted by pandemic flu viruses, this seems to happen about every 20 years. As we approach that 20 year mark, the occasional cross-species infection will occur, as the virus hops into some unlucky human who was in direct contact with the infected host. At that time, it's evident that there's a new form of the disease to which we're no longer immune.
We also know that every so often natural mutations will confer the ability to become transmissible to humans via airborne droplets that are exhaled by a carrier. Once that happens, the virus is able to spread among humans very rapidly.
So there are two things nature needs to create a new strain of pandemic flu: novelty and transmissibility. Once we see the novel form, it's time to create a vaccine that hopefully will lessen its impact before the time it naturally becomes transmissible on its own.
But mutations are mutations. We don't know for certain that the mutant form that's transmissible is still similar enough to the novel form for our autoimmune systems to recognize them both (keep in mind that the non-lethal form cultured for the vaccine is already somewhat different from the lethal form.) So the researchers are trying to study the possible mutations so they can test and develop the vaccines before they're actually needed in the wild.
tl;dr - they need to do this research, or a lot of people will die.
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'You seem to be forgetting that nobody has ever been able to "cure" a virus ever. EVER.'
Antiviral treatment of chronic Hep C infections has a 50-80% cure rate:
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Hepatitis-C/Pages/Treatment.aspx [www.nhs.uk]
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>When they develop also develop the antidote or cure.
No released research = no cure.
Your move.
-- BMO
Zero Day Exploit that KILLS PEOPLE.
Your Move.
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Dear Dr. Stupid,
Did it ever occur to you that there might other ways to detect dangerous virus strains in nature besides weaponizing the avian flu? And then teaching the world how to do it?
Maybe carrying a nuclear hand grenade isn't the best way to scare off muggers?
xoxo, Anonymous
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You do understand, don't you, that Freedom, Wealth, Education, Commerce, Equality, Human Possibility, all reached new heights after WWII?
For the survivors.
I am sure those who had limbs blown off or lost their entire families to firebombs would be hard pressed to call it a good tradeoff.
Seems very familiar (Score:2)
Just hope they don't call it Captain Tripps
The paper is published, the virus is unleashed? (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF? That makes no sense. How does publishing a PAPER somehow unleash the virus? The research and work has already been done. Censoring or publishing the paper does nothing to affect, one way or another, whether the virus will mutate in this fashion.
As for potential terrorism uses, there are plenty of other virulent diseases that can be weaponized, far easier, in crude labs.
Frankly, I'd be more afraid of terrorists creating some disease that acts slowly, while spreading rapidly, across a narrow genotype. Think of the damage a virus that shuts down your kidneys completely, followed by other organs... over a couple of years time, while spreading as an airborne pathogen. Our health systems would be overtaxed, productivity would drop, it would be an economic disaster for the targeted areas.
Re:The paper is published, the virus is unleashed? (Score:5, Insightful)
>WTF? That makes no sense. How does publishing a PAPER somehow unleash the virus?
Because the powers that be that make these decisions know nothing about virology and everything about politics.
These are the same idiots that call terrorists that try to explode their underpants "sophisticated" on national television.
Sophisticated is what the USSR was doing up until the collapse - making nuclear weapons that could explode at a desired height above ground within a couple of meters accuracy in 3 dimensions and wipe out an entire city.
Yet according to them, we should wet their pants over a paper or exploding underpants. The mental gymnastics of this sort of doublethink are olympic-class.
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BMO
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I said: "Yet according to them, we should wet their pants"
OUR, not THEIR.
Daffy Duck: "Pronoun trouble"
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BMO
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I said: "Yet according to them, we should wet their pants"
OUR, not THEIR.
It was truly better before publishing the errata.
(I know, almost in the same category with erotic fantasy, but...) If needed, I would queue for day and nights if I knew I can legally wet their pants while they are wearing them. Heck, I'd do it multiple times.
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I'm right with ya there, brah. I'd be drinking beer in the queue, as it has Vitamin P.
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BMO
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"I drink a whiskey drink;
I drink a chocolate drink;
and when I have to pee
I use the kitchen sink.
I sing the song that reminds me I'm a urinating guy!"
(HJS)
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To quote Jon Stewart from his appearance on The O'Reilly Factor:
"Let's look at the geniuses we're up against. Richard Reid was the airplane bomber. He tried to take that explosive and put it in his shoes. It took them eight years, and the plan they came up with in eight years is 'uhh... why don't we try sticking it under that guy's genitals?' That's what they did in eight years. They moved from the guy's shoes up to his underwear. And that's who we're up against."
Re:The paper is published, the virus is unleashed? (Score:5, Informative)
Posting AC because I'm talking about work (and stupid things we discussed as work).
When Kawaoka published, my lab got together and examined what it would take to actually build the virus. It was surprisingly easy--and I'm an undergraduate intern in a bacterial lab (but I am studying viro, hence my interest). We could do it within our tiny budget with no problem, and the professor said he thought his students could do it with the help of a textbook. Order the genetic code in snippets, stitch it together, make plasmid, express it. You could do that in your bedroom after dropping a few thousand dollars on basic, easy-to-use lab gear and custom genetic fragments.
I'm not defending the censorship, which has been demonstrated again and again was utterly without merit, but I can understand why it happened.
Kawaoka and Fouchier suffered because, partially at their own hand, their papers were initially misrepresented. Somehow, somewhere, someone said that all of their ferrets died of flu. This simply isn't true. This was therefore repeated and repeated until it became an 'official' rumor, largely because this isn't a statistic typically associated with flu. Because this was marked as potentially dangerous virus, the paper was reviewed by the NSABB (National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity). NSABB examines papers that may be of 'dual use'--useful to research and useful to terrorists. The NSABB *does* have trained virologists, but since NSABB is primarily appointed by present NSABB members from a pool of people who are interested in NSABB work, it's full of people who are in the biosecurity mindset. The NSABB, by the way, is a purely advisory board with no powers whatsoever.
Their recommendation was basically 'let's wait and think more about this.' Therefore, the now-known harmless nature of the viruses suddenly became a secret. Kawaoka and Fouchier could have prevent this controversy by releasing their conclusion with no details, but they decided to play by the rules and not talk about anything.
The blame is spread around a fair bit, but it stands most firmly on the NSABB's hesitance and gag order (or gag suggestion, I suppose). Personally (and a number of prominent virologists seem to agree), I think that the media's need for a story is the central problem, as it both took the bad facts about the results and repeated them, ultimately passing them on to NSABB.
If this had been a nasty virus, this hype would be justified. Yes, we can make plague, 1918 flu, etc, in the lab, but we know those viruses. Without knowing that, for instance, oseltamivir kills these new viruses very easily, we were potentially faced with a novel virus with zero data as to how we could respond to it.
As to releasing the cure before the paper, that's actually possible: the novel from the virus and data from the paper could have been handed over to federal (probably military) labs, who could have worked on a vaccine.
If you have some hours to burn, check out http://www.twiv.tv/tag/nsabb/ for a lengthy but decent coverage by a few of the best-know virologists.
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Here, we are going to inject you with this untested vaccine and then expose you to an heretofore unknown virus, oh and since this virus is unknown we expect you to stay quarantined off from all human contact until we are 100% sure the virus is completely eliminated from your system, or you die, in which case we w
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This is stupid. How easy is it for Al Qaeda or ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So, how do you do it? You get allies to work in chicken farms in Indonesia, China, Vietnam, etc. These are all the places in which H5N1 variants are active. Wait until the farm has it (and right now, about 5-10% of the farms get it EACH YEAR). Once a place has it, take samples from the various chickens and take it back to Pakistan. spin down the blood, removing the blood cells and then inject it into a person (oddly, better to inject it into a child or old person; Avian operates different than other virus). Once they have it, expose them to normal airborne human flu. IOW, you are turning a human into a viral incubator. At that time, take samples of the person to hold aside, while you have 10-15 humans (knowing AQ, probably women) wait on the incubator. Spend a lot of time with them for the next 5-10 days. If somebody becomes infected, draw a number of samples from them, while allowing them to infect several other ppl. If the first set of waitors die from the infection, then you very likely have an airborne avian flu.
At that time, keep the infections going for a bit, but ideally, add in swine flu. The spanish flu that stopped WWI, was apparently a combination of Avian, Swine, and Human flu. Regardless, the original mixture is enough, but if you go with several more levels, you can make it even more lethal.
At that time, draw blood over the course of a couple of days from current incubators, spin it down to remove blood cells, mix, and then break apart into 1MM vials. That is enough to turn any human that is injected with it into a typhoid mary. Send them into airports, sporting events, malls, etc. Do it during the early phase when it is shedding, but not showing much symptoms of morbidity. Upon the person showing too many signs, pull them in, allow them to die in a quiet apartment and then dispose. Repeat with new person.
So, why did I post this? To point out how trivial it is to create this. More importantly, to point out that AQ has some nice and easy means of doing this. The question is, what stops them? Their enmens (sp). These ppl will say no to this. At some point, as AQ gets to the end of losing their war, they will disregard and do this. At that time, I hope that we are ready. Otherwise, it is possible that the spanish flu will be nothing more than a sniffle compared to what this will do.
Re:This is stupid. How easy is it for Al Qaeda or (Score:5, Funny)
Yet AQ cannot even get someone's underpants to explode correctly.
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BMO
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not long (Score:2)
6 months? Big deal. That's just the normal delay to get something published in a peer reviewed journal. For some journals it can take up to a year.
RTFA! (Score:4, Interesting)
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No.
They published how to weaponize a virus (Score:2)
... why do we even bother? You know what... everyone get a nuke, everyone weaponize your virus of choice... why bother trying to preserve any semblance of world peace. Lets just nuke each other and get it over with...
Fire up the virology labs... lets make doomsday bugs. Sure billions might die but it's in the cause of science... and of course, lets tell every tin pot psychotic dictatorship how to make it.
Unanswered questions (Score:3, Interesting)
The first step to a vaccine... (Score:1)
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Go into options and set "comment post mode" to "plain old text". Otherwise you need to do the formatting manually with line break tags and such.
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That was it, thanks compro01!