Expect an accidental leak and contamination near Iran

Security fears as flu virus that killed 50 million is recreated

Ian Sample, science correspondent
Thursday October 6, 2005
The Guardian

Scientists have recreated the 1918 Spanish flu virus, one of the
deadliest ever to emerge, to the alarm of many researchers who fear it
presents a serious security risk.
Undisclosed quantities of the virus are being held in a high-security
government laboratory in Atlanta, Georgia, after a nine-year effort to
rebuild the agent that swept the globe in record time and claimed the
lives of an estimated 50 million people.

The genetic sequence is also being made available to scientists
online, a move which some fear adds a further risk of the virus being
created in other labs.

The recreation was carried out in an attempt to understand what made
the 1918 outbreak so devastating. Reporting in the journal Science, a
team lead by Dr Jeffery Taubenberger at the Armed Forces Institute of
Pathology in Maryland shows that the recreated virus is extremely
effective. When injected into mice, it quickly took hold and they
started to lose weight rapidly, shedding 13% of their original weight
in just two days. Within six days, all mice injected with the virus
had died.

In a comparison experiment, similar mice were injected with a
contemporary strain of flu, and although the mice lost weight
initially, they recovered. Tests revealed that the Spanish flu virus
multiplied so rapidly that after four days, mice contained 39,000
times more flu virus than those injected with the more common strain
of flu.

The government and military researchers who reconstructed the virus
say their work has already provided invaluable insight into its unique
genetic make-up and helps explain its lethality. But other researchers
warned yesterday the that virus could escape from the laboratory.
"This will raise clear questions among some as to whether they have
really created a biological weapon," said Professor Ronald Atlas at
the centre for deterrence of biowarfare and bioterrorism at the
University of Louisville in Kentucky.

Publication of the work and the filing of the virus's genetic make-up
to an online database followed an emergency meeting last week by the
US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, which concluded
that the benefits of publishing the work outweighed the risks. Many
scientists remained sceptical. "Once the genetic sequence is publicly
available, there's a theoretical risk that any molecular biologist
with sufficient knowledge could recreate this virus," said Dr John
Wood, a virologist at the National Institute for Biological Standards
and Control in Potters Bar.