[staytrue]

Why in the world would they publish the sequence for this virus?

The sum total of their knowledge is small compared to the sum total of all scientists. By publishing the sequence, all other scientists get to have a whack at finding a treatment for it.

[kinoxi]

It hasn't been around for almost 90 years. They don't need to develop treatments for it. If one were to say that it is to be used for treating future potential mutations, that sounds a bit far fetched considering that current relatively nonlethal strains cannot be predicted and vaccinated against from year to year. This is a proof of concept at the very minimum for anyone with nefarious intent.

This statement from the article :
"Working with ferrets, they have found that a change of only one or two amino acids in the flu sequence is enough to stop transmission. They will publish the result in Science. Identifying which sections of the genome are responsible for transmission "has huge predictive value for whether strains will become pandemic or not" Has obvious ramifications far beyond this particular strain.