Scientists created the new strains of bird flu could spread easier among the humans -- U.S. government asked them to keep in secret

The lab of the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the U.S. both succeeded in creating new strains of bird flu that spread easier. This experiment is paid to the scientists by the U.S. government. After discovering this astonishing and alarming finding, the U.S. government asks the scientists and journals not to publish any details of biomedical experiment, for fear that information could be used by the bioterrorists to make a copy of creating the virus.



On December 20, for the first time, it’s never happened before that the federal officials asked the scientists not to publicize all the details of how they did it. A government advisory panel, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, overseen by the National Institutes of Health, has asked two journals Science and Nature that only could publish the conclusions, but not the experimental details and mutation data that would encourage the terrorists to replicate the experiments.



Nevertheless, The Dutch researchers presented already their work at a virology conference in Malta in September.



The scientists found that the virus they created a highly transmissible form of a deadly flu virus that does not normally spread from person to person and the so-called H5N1 bird flu could spread easily among at least some mammals. They did the experiment on the little white ferret and inferred a conclusion from it.



Originally the U.S. government paid scientists to figure out how the deadly bird flu virus might mutate to become a bigger threat to people, this kind of research is worthy encouraging after all, although the conclusion is terrified us. We support the decision of U.S. government asked the journals and scientists not to publish any details about it.



As we know that there were only about 200 people died in H5N1 from 2003. But how come if the terrorists or the bad people get the details to make a copy of creating the virus by chance? That’s really bad to the world!

Ps. original version published on the website of Taiwan News by Theresa Huang