[bigheadfred]

But how hard do you think it would be for them to tweak the one that killed millions in the 1918 pandemic? Maybe they already have.

"An effort to recreate the 1918 flu strain (a subtype of avian strain H1N1) was a collaboration among the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory and Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City; the effort resulted in the announcement (on October 5, 2005) that the group had successfully determined the virus's genetic sequence, using historic tissue samples recovered by pathologist Johan Hultin from a female flu victim buried in the Alaskan permafrost and samples preserved from American soldiers.[68] On January 18, 2007, Kobasa et al. reported that monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) infected with the recreated strain exhibited classic symptoms of the 1918 pandemic and died from a cytokine storm[69]—an overreaction of the immune system

Varied ever so slightly but just as deadly and introduce it anywhere in the world and who is the wiser?

[americanophile]

I don't think it would be hard at all. If you can grow an alligator snout on a chicken, you can mutate the flu. We know some of the reported weaponized versions of things like small pox, plague, and anthrax are true horrors. Even some of the naturally occurring viruses like the hideous Ebola would be unstoppable if it were released into the general population. In my opinion, it's only a matter of time until there is a nexus between the knowledge and the will to unleash this kind of destruction.