In September last year a research group lead by Ron Fouchier from the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, announced that they had succeeded in mutating the bird flu H5N1 into an easily transmitted avian form at a conference in Malta. It took only five mutations to make the bird flu easily transmissible amongst ferrets, the usual animal model used in virology studies. This would probably mean, that the virus could transmit easily between humans as well, through sneezing and coughing. Another research group led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka had done similar research at the University of Wisconsin Madison and had succeeded in making the avian bird flu too.
In late December Fouchier sent his paper to Science and Kawaoka sent his to Nature to get published. The papers both included methodology sections, as science papers do, so that other scientists can replicate and do further research on their findings. At this point, on the twentieth of December to be exact, the NSABB released a statement voicing concern about full publication and proposed instead a redacted version in which only the main findings and conclusions were included. This lead to several news papers running articles about a dangerous 'killer' flu and dangers of bioterror. On January, Science and Nature co-released a statement from Fouchier, Kawaoka and the 36 co-authors announcing a 60 day suspension on all avian H5N1 research.
The recorded mortality rate of bird flu is 50%, a truly alarming number. The Spanish Flu that killed between 20 and 40 million people in 1918 had a mortality rate of 1-2%. Most news articles make this comparison. However, as the rate is based upon hospitalised and tested patients, it is probably a lot lower in reality.
Because of this high mortality rate and that it takes only five mutations to make the wild form into the easily transmitted form caused fear that it could be used as a weapon of bioterror. Hence the proposed omission of methodology. This is a somewhat flawed argument, as a release of the mutated form would cause a pandemic that would be hard to contain and spread throughout the world, so the ones using the avian H5N1 as a weapon would be in as much danger as the rest of the world. Many virologists argued as well that a redaction will not constrain the knowledge of how to make the avian H5N1, as it was announced back in September at the conference mentioned above.
One thing that speaks for publishing the papers in full is that it only takes five mutations to make it into the avian H5N1. This could happen in nature and poses a lot larger threat than bioterror. That researchers have succeeded in making these mutations occur before they have happened in nature puts them one step ahead of the virus. This means that we are now aware that it is possible through just a few mutations, and gives us the chance to prepare vaccines and improve infrastructure to cope with the virus.
A conference with the lead scientists, representatives from the NSABB along with other expert virologists and bioethicists at WHO's headquarters in Geneva on February 17th and 18th concluded that publication should be postponed but published in full. Due to the high concern and amount of public fear they want to first sort out security questions concerning the research before publishing. But they will eventually publish both papers in full as they deemed it most beneficial for health.
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