Bird Flu Research Rattles Bioterrorism Field

I'm of the opinion that viri research -needs- to go over the top in controlled places and with as much security / lab safety protocols. How else do we get experts in 'stopping' the outbreaks if there are no -experts- working the strains?

The big questions with a massive outbreak are: How bad, and what virus is it.

Much like Yellowstone's Volcano , it is going to happen. Eventually.

M.

reply to post by Moshpet

How else do we get experts in 'stopping' the outbreaks if there are no -experts- working the strains?

Erm, pray? ...Obvious, I know. But I also believe there's no stopping current or future pandemics - prevention is the key, and it's NOT all about "lifestyle."

Much like Yellowstone's Volcano , it is going to happen. Eventually.

Uh huh. And given how much industry has contaminated this petrie dish we call a planet - it's gonna be a big blow. With lots of aftershocks.

So in an attempt to stay ahead of H5N1, scientists have been tweaking its genes in the lab to learn more about how this virus works, and what it is capable of.

B.S.!

At best, If this scientist really has been "tweaking its genes" for this reason then he is incredibly naive. Where is his funding coming from?

But this dangerous virus has not caused widespread human disease because, so far, sick people haven't been very contagious.

This very well could have been done for one reason and one reason only - to sell vaccines. Remember all the money pharmaceutical companies made back in 2009 from the pandemic scare and selling vaccines to nations across the world? Remember the Council on Foreign Relations discussing strategy for getting people to take the H1N1 vaccine and deciding on a strategy of lying to people and creating artificial scarcity in order to sell these vaccines?? Well, it seems, 3 years later, they're going to try to give it another go...

reply to post by Iamonlyhuman

At best, If this scientist really has been "tweaking its genes" for this reason then he is incredibly naive. Where is his funding coming from?

Wherever it's coming from, it is NOT privately owned. This whole fuss is about his desire to publish the results so everyone can benefit - not just one single vaccine manufacturer. .......Remember, this guy/group is not the only one working on H5N1 transmissibility - just the only one that wants to share his findings. As it happens, the study outlined in the OP upstages recent -and similar- US research.

Reassortment and mutation of the avian influenza polymerase PA subunit overcomes species barriers

Emergence of new pandemic influenza A viruses requires overcoming barriers to cross-species transmission as viruses move from animal reservoirs into humans. This complicated process is driven by both individual gene mutations and genome reassortment. ….the human, avian, swine and 2009 H1N1-like viruses that are currently co-circulating in pig populations set the stage for PA reassortments with the potential to generate novel viruses that could possess expanded tropism and enhanced pathogenicity.

…….
Study finds gene changes that would boost avian flu transmissibility

In experiments to shed light on what polymerase changes in avian flu viruses are needed to clear the barriers for infecting human cells, researchers found that reassortment involving a human PA protein were key. US scientists assembled different combinations of avian and human influenza polymerase genes, then conducted tests to assess polymerase activity and virus replication. They then infected mice with the recombinant viruses to determine if the polymerase changes increased pathogenicity. They found that polymerase acid (PA) subunits from human viruses restored the ability to infect humans, even in a strain with a previously known restrictive polymorphism. ......The group concluded that avian influenza A viruses with seasonal human flu, the 2009 H1N1 virus, and swine-adapted viruses are circulating in pigs and have already formed new reassortants. They write that their findings suggest that further reassortment could create new viruses that can infect a wider host range and be more pathogenic.

This very well could have been done for one reason and one reason only - to sell vaccines.

Yes - because no one knows what else to do.

Remember all the money pharmaceutical companies made back in 2009 from the pandemic scare and selling vaccines to nations across the world? ....Well, it seems, 3 years later, they're going to try to give it another go...

Yes - because we are definitely in deep doodoo, and there is nothing else in the "arsenal" to "fight" disease - because corporate industry would lose profits if we focused on prevention, as we should be doing but are not.

FYI - H5N1 bird flu is endemic and epidemic in several places, including China. A new strain looks really bad. If it goes pandemic, then what?

FAO official warns of elevated risk of avian flu in China

H5N1 avian flu is widespread in China's poultry markets, especially in the south, according to a United Nations (UN) official. Guo Fusheng, technical adviser in animal health for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said the country is facing an increased risk of the virus, in both poultry and people, according to a China Daily story today. Fusheng, citing data from China's Ministry of Agriculture, said H5N1 clade 2.3.2.1 poses a special risk, given that current vaccines in poultry do not fully protect against it. "With the arrival of autumn and winter, the country is facing an escalating risk of bird flu outbreaks among poultry as well as that of humans getting infected," he warned. Yu Kangzhen, chief veterinary officer of the Ministry of Agriculture, said that, while localized outbreaks will be hard to prevent, "the chance of large-scale outbreaks is quite slim."

I wrote the following and posted in another thread while thinking about this one:

It's very cool -and legitimate- to try to understand how things work naturally; what doesn't work is trying to use the knowledge when it's incomplete - which happens all the time. ....and the reason people jump the gun on scientific knowledge is because of the way funding works - scientists can only get money for research if they claim their approach can lead to money-making products (and then deliver). Wrong approach - knowledge for the sake of knowledge was still a legitimate goal even in the 1970's, but now it's ridiculed as senseless.

....Something to think about.

The whole bioterrorism angle on this is pure bull crap. Terrorists do not have the motivation or resources to play with genetic engineering - corporations do. And corporate industry mucks with our environment in ways that promote disease mutations.

Bioterror fears could block crucial flu research

The work was reported by New Scientist in September but its formal publication has now been delayed by fears that the information could be dangerous in the wrong hands, including those of other researchers. Virologists argue that publication is essential for keeping watch on natural H5N1, which poses a far greater threat.

…..Researchers familiar with the work say the risks are overstated. "Nature is much more likely to come up with highly pathogenic influenza than we humans," says Peter Palese of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

Daniel Perez of the University of Maryland in College Park says publishing will generate more biosecurity, not less. That's because it will show which mutations to look for in natural H5N1 – and why more such monitoring is needed. "H5N1 is out of control," he says.

"A bit of a wake-up call on flu might not go amiss," agrees Peter Doherty of the University of Melbourne in Australia, who won the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine in 1996 for work in viral immunity and now works on flu. "H5N1 is mutating a lot, and virologists need to know the ferret study so they can watch for those mutations," he says. "The real bioterror threat comes from nature itself."

reply to post by soficrow


back in 1998, there was a big concern in asia about bird flu, seems research being done there showed tens of thousands of chickens housed in cramped building no sanitaion for the birds, they saw people walking in dirty water, full of dog, bird feces, no shoes, or sandles, handing food, money and coughing all around the markets. yet in this country you get type a, or b flu shots then, yet when people get sick they have to travel, or go shopping, without a care for you or anyone else.

reply to post by bone13


The conditions you describe apply to factory farming everywhere. ...Re: H5N1 Bird flu in Asia - I subscribe to the conspiracy theory that it was genetically engineered by Western corporations to destroy Asia's poultry industry and thereby, reduce competition and compromise the increasingly powerful Asian economy.

More info for you:

The Feedlot Factor: First E. Coli, Now Bird Flu

Spin and Counterspin: New Bird Flu Mutation has 91% Fatality Rate in Humans

Should scientific information be in the public domain?

OR

Should science be privately owned, and sold for profit?

The past month has seen much un-informed discussion and media coverage - all to scapegoat Fouchier and Kawaoka, and distract attention from the realities: H5N1 is mutating and spreading like wildfire; factory farms created the problem, plus maybe a bit of corporate GE tinkering to kill the Asian competition.

But who cares about the facts?

VIDEO. US to scientists: Don't print recipe for deadly bird flu

reply to post by soficrow

You already know how I feel about this insanity soficrow, i've been trying to get people to notice threads about it all night long.

While viruses do mutate readily in nature, they do not always follow a path of harmless - mild - moderate - harmful - deadly - unstoppable.

Just as often as getting worse in severity, they get less so.

IOW, the mutation of the virus can go both ways, harmful or benign.

In a few mutations in the wild, H5N1 may well have become something that is no longer a threat at all to us.

Designing the virus so that it is definitely deadly and very contagious to us, isn't a good turn of events.

reply to post by spikey


So many bioweapons have been purposefully and accidentally released -and 1997 H5N1 bird flu is probably one of them- that one more seems hardly noticeable. ...Kidding. Sort of.

....I agree that it's criminal to create deadly pathogens - but I also know it happens all the time and I hate it that these 2 guys are being scapegoated for following industry standard. Except for the part where they want to benefit the public. That's not standard.

...In the past, when the world was cleaner and more natural, yes - pathogens evolved to become harmless more often than not. But in today's contaminated polluted world, virtually every microbe and virus is mutating pathogenically. ...The fastest growing career path is food safety because of this.

H5N1 bird flu in the wild and in domestic food poultry will NOT become benign - most likely it will share it's deadly genetic material with something else like H1N1 swine flu. But whatever emerges first, we WILL see a killer pandemic sooner rather than later. And it WILL have been caused by human activity - just not the kind that most worries you.

Fouchier and Kawaoka were set up. The ball was already in play before they did their research.

Seems I posted the following in the wrong thread.

Security in Flu Study Was Paramount, Scientist Says

The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, concerned about bioterrorism and a worldwide pandemic, has for the first time ever urged scientific journals to keep details out of reports that they intend to publish on a highly transmissible form of the bird flu called A(H5N1), which has a high death rate in people. Working with ferrets, researchers on the virus at two medical centers — Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison — are investigating genetic changes that may make the virus more easily transmittable to people. Doreen Carvajal spoke with Ron A. M. Fouchier, the lead researcher at the Erasmus Center.

I've pulled comments that are most interesting to me - but it's well worth taking time to read the whole interview.

In principle, we of course understand the statement by the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity and the United States government. This is dual-use research, meaning research that can be used for good and bad purposes.

The N.S.A.B.B. advice is that we can share this in a restricted form.

We would be perfectly happy if this could be executed, but we have some doubts. We have made a list of experts that we could share this with, and that list adds up to well over 100 organizations around the globe, and probably 1,000 experts. As soon as you share information with more than 10 people, the information will be on the street. And so we have serious doubts whether this advice can be followed, strictly speaking.

Q. So what is the solution?

A. This is very important research. It raises a number of important issues that need to be shared with the scientific community. And because we cannot keep this confidential with such a large group. I think the only solution is to publish in detail.

Q. How do you sum up the most vital information that should be shared?

A. There are three aspects that need to be shared.

The first part of the work can be shared without detail. The message is that H5N1 can go airborne between mammals. Of course, we have also showed how this virus can go airborne, and which mutations cause this virus to go airborne. And those mutations, the info of those mutations, need to come in the hands of people who are doing research — for instance, the people who are doing surveillance in countries affected by H5N1. If those mutations would be detected in the field, then those countries affected should act very aggressively to stamp out the outbreaks, to protect the world.

So if we can stamp this virus out before it actually emerges, then we prevent a pandemic. And I think that is what we all want.

But even if we would not be able to prevent a pandemic — and let’s assume that there is a very small chance that the virus will emerge in nature — then our last resource would be drugs and vaccines.

Now, drugs and vaccines are normally evaluated with bird flu viruses that are not adapted to mammals. Now the questions are whether those vaccines are effective against the mammal-adapted virus. And so by doing this research, we are able to get ahead of this virus emerging in the field to test whether our last resource would be functional.

So the three things are: one is the simple fact that it can go airborne. That means that all the advice from the scientific community to outbreak countries now can be more unanimous that H5N1 is a very big risk to human health. The second thing is surveillance, and the third thing is preparation by evaluating vaccines and antivirals.

Q. How easy is it to recreate this virus?

A. It is not very easy. You need a very sophisticated specialist team and sophisticated facilities to do this. And in our opinion, nature is the biggest bioterrorist. There are many pathogens in nature that you could get your hands on very easily, and if you released those in the human population, we would be in trouble.

And therefore we think that if bioterror or biowarfare would be a problem, there are so many easy ways of doing it that nobody would take this H5N1 virus and do this very difficult thing to achieve it.

You could not do this work in your garage if you are a terrorist organization. But what you can do is get viruses out of the wild and grow them in your garage. There are terrorist opportunities that are much, much easier than to genetically modify H5N1 bird flu virus that are probably much more effective.

Fouchier's last answer in the NYT interview:

The only people who want to hold back are the biosecurity experts. They show zero tolerance to risk. The public health specialists do not have this zero tolerance. I have not spoken to a single public health specialist who was against publication. So we are going to see an interesting debate over the next few weeks between biosecurity experts and public health experts who think this information should be in the public domain.

Originally posted by remembering
I think that the results should be destroyed. There are just some things that man should not tinker in. At least in the way of making it worse for human kind. I also think that the persons, companies and sponsors should all be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.

Anything that shows any remote sign of having adverse effects on man kind would never be destroyed. It maybe shelved but never destroy. Regardless of what they are, weapons are weapons and mankind has a hunger for destruction, of ways to conquer other men.

Study for immunisations yes but not to turn them into weapons that could potentially wipe out mankind...

reply to post by soficrow


In my opinion it should be made public.
It is the easiest and most effective way to reach as many experts around the globe as possible.
It sounds like what they have done is pretty basic stuff.
I would assume someone attempting Bioterrorism would know the basics anyhow.
Censoring would not make much sense therefore.

reply to post by derpif


Two articles of interest:

Virologists fire back at U.S. for H5N1 censorship request

….some experts have accused the NSABB of over-reacting. Others worry that such requests could proliferate and stifle a free flow of information.

"It's going to sully scientific communication if, for spurious concern about biological warfare, little groups of self-appointed people start censoring," John Oxford, a professor at London Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry, said, Physprg.com reports. "I know they call it 'redacted' or some such, but it's pure censorship. It's censorship of a high level, and if that starts coming into the scientific arena, we will not know where we are."

Killer-Flu Debate: Should Mutant H5N1 Have Been Created?

The altered viruses developed by Fouchier's and Kawaoka's research might give researchers a better idea of how to prepare, Gambotto said.

Vaccine developers could test the existing vaccines against the lab strains to get at least some idea of how effective they might be against the mutant virus. If they don't prevent infection, then developers know they'll need something else in order to have a running start, he said.

"By the time we start seeing the first people dying, isolate a virus, generate a vaccine, it is probably one year or eight months if everything goes smoothly," he said. "But that eight months can be deadly for humanity."

The demonstration that bird flu can be coaxed into spreading easily among mammals is a wake-up call to the world that has been tuning out a potential pandemic, Robert Webster, a virologist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, told LiveScience.

"The virus has been around for 15 years since it appeared in Hong Kong and it first got a lot of attention, then less, and less. Even though it has [caused] 600 cases in humans and killed about 60 percent of people, people were starting to say this is an aberration, so let's move on to worry about bigger problems," Webster said. "These two papers make it clear this can happen."

From India's "The Hindu":

Thinking after acting

The United States government, which funded two teams of scientists to research if the H5N1 influenza virus has the potential to trigger a pandemic, has developed cold feet — after reviewing papers containing detailed descriptions of the lethal strains. The papers have already been sent to two journals, Nature and Science. ….The results of the study were presented recently at a scientific conference in Malta by Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Center at Rotterdam, one of the research teams funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). The details were also shared with journalists covering the event. New Scientist and Scientific American reported in detail how the team went about creating the killer virus. ….all the five mutations (three created in the lab and two produced naturally) are found in nature.

Though people can misuse this information, there is a compelling need for scientists to be aware of these mutations so that effective drugs and vaccines can be developed. Little wonder that both editors have reacted strongly to censorship and demanded that a mechanism be put in place to ensure that bona fide scientists have full and complete access to the results.

The only way to develop vaccines and treatments is to grow the disease-causing agent from "seed stock" and then, experiment with it.

Creating "seed stock" involves genetically manipulating specimens. Even viruses like H5N1 bird flu and ebola need to be genetically manipulated to create "seed viruses," which then are distributed for use in developing treatments and vaccines.

The CDC collects flu and other virus samples from around the world, creates seed stock and through the FDA, distributes "disease seed" to their corporate partners in Big Pharma, the military-industrial complex and the new biodefense industry.

Creating seed viruses and other seed stocks is big business - vaccine development and production is even bigger.

Check it out: The Process of Making A Vaccine

In this light, it's obvious that Fouchier's and Kawaoka's real crime was wanting scientific information to be Open Access - and threatening the monopoly currently controlled by the CDC, FDA, Big Pharma, the military-industrial complex and the new biodefense industry.

The biodefense industry has grown by leaps and bounds to become a major player in the biopharmaceutical industry. But growth -and profits- hinge on protecting scientific information as "Intellectual Property."

One 'biodefense' company of interest is Emergent BioSolutions, a multinational headquartered in Maryland and controlled by Fuad El-Hibri - the only FDA-licensed supplier for the human anthrax vaccine in the United States.

Anthrax Vaccine Licensing and Production

The only FDA-licensed human anthrax vaccine' in the United States, Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed (AVA, trade name BioThrax), is produced by Emergent BioDefense Corporation, formerly known as BioPort Corporation in Lansing, Michigan. The parent company of Emergent BioDefense is Emergent BioSolutions of Rockville, Maryland. Both Emergent BioSolutions and Porton International Group, Ltd., Porton Down, UK, are controlled by Fuad El-Hibri.

….In the U.S., the principal purchasers of the vaccine are the Department of Defense and Department of Health and Human Services. Ten million doses of the vaccine have been purchased for the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile.

Maybe El-Hibri wanted Emergent BioSolutions to get the patent on the vaccine for airborne H5N1 bird flu?

Helen Bramswell's Canadian Press article on this topic is informed, balanced and thought provoking. ...Those who still think Fouchier and Kawaoka require censuring should re-consider the standard process for vaccine development described above, and check out the Tetragenetics H5N1 bird flu nano-vaccine announcement below.

Controversial bird flu studies defy easy solutions: WHO

Controversial bird flu studies that are pitting influenza researchers and scientific journals against biosecurity experts raise complex issues and should not be framed in simplistic terms by proponents or opponents of their publication, a World Health Organization official suggests.

While it's tempting to boil the arguments down to a single issue -- the evils of censorship, the sanctity of open science, the dangers of bioterrorism -- to do so ignores the many difficult questions that the scientific, public health and security worlds need to work through to forge a path forward, Dr. Keiji Fukuda said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

Tetragenetics' G-SOME(TM)-Formulated Influenza Vaccine Provides Strong Protection Against H5N1 in Preclinical Efficacy Study

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan 05, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Tetragenetics Inc., a biotechnology company focused on the development of recombinant vaccines, today reported preclinical study results showing that an investigational nanoparticle-based influenza vaccine protects against a highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza strain. The study was conducted by scientists at the Institute for Antiviral Research of Utah State University in Logan, Utah and Tetragenetics under a contract sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.

Tetragenetics scientists designed and produced a recombinant nanoparticle vaccine against a highly pathogenic avian influenza virus subtype, namely the H5N1 (A/Vietnam/1203/2004) strain. At lethal doses of influenza, 90% in the treatment group that were immunized with the company's vaccine survived the lethal challenge. The H5N1 vaccine candidate was comprised of the viral hemagglutinin linked to a scaffold protein from Tetrahymena thermophila that promotes assembly into remarkably homogenous nanoparticles in the 40-60nm size range (G-SOME(TM) particles).