I would like to personally thank the scientific community for having the super-sized egos necessary to pursue something as dangerous as this without even beginning to consider any of the potential ethical issues (why should this case be any different to all the other scientific irresponsibility observed over the years?).
Forget ethics -- this piece is far more troubling than Global Warming every could be! These wonks go and create some hybrid, which mutates some innate, but inert viral signature into a lethal killing machine. The bug that caused the 1918 WW Influenza Pandemic, to the best of my knowledge, has never be identified with certainty; believe is that it was a mutated bug from pigs that jumped to humans.
One "whoops" and it could be goodnight for many :~|