This is another "you can't make this shit up"...story.
The research team, led by Ron Fouchier, professor of virology at Erasmus teaching hospitalought to be captured and put away in a Dutch dungeon for thinking up this "experiment"...
It would be really interesting to know just what they had in mind....
To learn more about how viruses function.
As in how they mutate. How they attach to cells. How they high-jack the workings of cells to reproduce.
The more you know how viruses function the more you can do to prevent them from killing people and the more you can modify viruses do what you want them to do. Like cure cancer, cure genetic disease or modify food crops to make them disease resistant.
This experiment proved that H5N1 can be weaponized.
China has had an active bio-weapon labs in Guangdong. They have too many people. Their economy is crashing. They need to get rid of a lot of their own restless peasants and want supremacy over other regions...