Why would they do this? (update)

[Nervous Wreck]

Scientists Create Deadly New Strain of Bird Flu


The U.S. government is sounding the alarm after reports that Dutch scientists have created a highly-contagious and deadly airborne strain of bird flu that is potentially capable of killing millions, The Independent reported Tuesday.

The U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity is currently analyzing how much of the scientists' information should be allowed to be published—given the inherent risks of having the information fall into the hands of terrorists or rogue states.

"The fear is that if you create something this deadly and it goes into a global pandemic, the mortality and cost to the world could be massive," a senior US government adviser told The Independent.

Scientists, too, are questioning whether the science should ever have been performed in the first place.



Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/12/2 ... z1h5aMTa6Y

[KYCanuck]

The only reason I can see why they would do something like this would be that the Science has some potential for learning about how to cure other things, although I can't see what that would be!
Of course I am not a scientist!

[Nervous Wreck]

Details of new lab-created bird flu strain may be too dangerous to publish

A genetically altered strain of the H5N1 avian flu virus is at the center of a controversial request to keep the details of its creation under wraps.

Scientists in Wisconsin and the Netherlands each created a strain of the influenza virus that is both highly lethal and easily transmitted between ferrets. Ferrets are the animals that most closely mimic the human response to the flu.

The Dutch paper, on the transmissibility of H5N1, was to be published in the journal Science and the University of Wisconsin study was to be published in the journal Nature. But the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), an independent committee that advises the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and other federal agencies on biosecurity matters reviewed the manuscripts and expressed concern about the release of some of the data.

"We did not think that these papers should be published in the form that we saw them and that the methods and results should be removed to prevent someone else from directly replicating their experiments," Dr. Paul Keim, a microbiologist and chair of NSABB said. "The avian flu is one of the scariest pathogens that is on the horizon and its transmissibility in mammals is a step toward transmissibility in human populations. The flu could be transmissible from human to human and that could happen in nature or perhaps it could happen in a laboratory. Whether from a natural source or a nefarious source this would not be a good thing for the world."

Keim says while there is no legal consequence to publishing the papers, the fact that the virus has a documented 60% mortality rate cannot be understated. "The worse case scenarios with this particular pathogen are devastating. It's a high mortality virus and it's a virus that could go global. It's something that we, the scientific community, have been worried for almost a decade."

article:
http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/2 ... &hpt=us_c2

[Rafe Covington]

They do it because a bio-weopon makes alot more money than the cure for the weopon.

Rafe