Researchers working on the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus have voluntarily agreed to stop their studies for 60 days over concerns that their data could provide a bioterror threat.
In December, scientists from two independent groups, one led by Ron Fouchier at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands and the other by Yoshi Kawaoke at University of Wisconsin, reported that they had successfully manipulated H5N1 — which causes serious illness in birds, but has so far appeared to be less infectious among humans — to make it more virulent.
The strain the researchers created in the lab transmitted easily among ferrets, which suggests that it would behave similarly in humans. Although bird flu typically does not circulate well in people, it is deadly: since the first human cases were documented in Hong Kong in 1997, H5N1 has killed nearly 60% of the 582 humans it has infected.