Scientists call for urgent talks on mutant-flu research in Europe
Benefits and risks of ‘gain-of-function’ work must be evaluated, they say.
Heidi Ledford
20 December 2013
Work resumes on lethal flu strains
Study of lab-made viruses a ‘public-health responsibility’.
Declan Butler
23 January 2013
https://www.nature.com/news/work-resumes-on-lethal-flu-strains-1.12266
An international group of scientists this week ended a year-long moratorium on controversial work to engineer potentially deadly strains of the H5N1 avian flu virus in the lab.
Researchers agreed to temporarily halt the work in January 2012, after a fierce row erupted over whether it was safe to publish two papers reporting that the introduction of a handful of mutations enabled the H5N1 virus to spread efficiently between ferrets, a model of flu in mammals (see Nature http://doi.org/fxv55r; 2012). Both papers were eventually published, one in Nature and one in Science.