guardian.co.uk

    This is the ultimate stupidity. Normally a virus weakens as it
spreads , giving humans time to develop immunity . But once the genome
is published , Al Qaida could replicate the virus and release it
simulataneously in many countries and ALL human kind except the
vaccinated Al Qaida ones would be dead before they had a chance .

excerpt guardian.co.uk oct 6
    Despite the new insights given by the project, many scientists
were alarmed at the recreation itself and particularly that the full
genetic sequence was to be made public on an online genetic database.

"Assuming this is a replicant of the 1918 flu strain, if it got out,
it could initiate disease in humans and given the work they've done,
one had to say it would be infectious," said Prof Atlas.

Viruses have escaped from high-security labs before. During the recent
Sars outbreak the virus escaped at least twice, once in Taiwan and
once in Singapore, when researchers became contaminated.

Other scientists warned that the 1918 virus's genetic code could
easily be misused. Such has been the pace of progress in genetic
science that companies now build genes to order for customers who send
in details of sequences they want.

"If the genetic sequence is out there on a database, then that is a
clear security risk," said Dr John Wood, a virologist at the National
Institute for Biological Standards and Control, in Potters Bar.

From frozen Alaska to the lab: a virus 39,000 times more virulent than
flu
Ian Sample, science correspondent
October 06 2005
Only a handful of scientists have security clearance to access the
laboratory at 1600 Clifton Road in Atlanta, Georgia, home to the US
government's Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Before
entering, they must pull on a protective hood, don brea

Security fears as flu virus that killed 50 million is recreated
Ian Sample, science correspondent
October 06 2005
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.

Only a handful of scientists have security clearance to access the
laboratory at 1600 Clifton Road in Atlanta, Georgia, home to the US
government's Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Before
entering, they must pull on a protective hood, don breathing apparatus
and pass through electronic fingerprint and retina scanners to prove
their identity.
Inside the lab lies a batch of a virus, designated a "select agent",
that more than justifies the extreme level of security. Resurrected
nearly 90 years after it spread around the globe, leaving an estimated
50 million people dead, it is a replica of the 1918 Spanish flu virus.

The recreation process was laborious. Scientists collected fragments
of the virus from lung tissue taken from victims at the time and
preserved in formalin or, in one case, isolated from the lungs of a
woman victim whose body had later become frozen in the Alaskan
permafrost. Using the fragments, they painstakingly pieced together
and read the complete genetic code before using the sequence to
rebuild the virus from scratch.

By injecting it into mice, the team led by Dr Jeffery Taubenberger at
the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Maryland was able to
establish just how ferociously effective it was, compared with more
common flu strains. All the mice infected died within a few days; all
infected with contemporary strains recovered. "I didn't expect it to
be as lethal as it was," Dr Terrence Tumpey, a scientist on the
project from the US Centres of Disease Control and Prevention, told
the journal
In a second paper, published in Nature today, Dr Taubenberger and
colleagues at the US Centres for Disease Control and Protection
analysed the genetic make-up of the recreated virus. Surprisingly,
they found it had no similarities to any of the human viruses in
circulation, suggesting that the Spanish strain had jumped from birds
to humans, and didn't mix with a human virus first, as had been
believed.

The finding that Spanish flu came straight from birds has raised
concerns among scientists. Previously, a pandemic was only thought
likely if an avian strain merged with a human flu virus. "For me, it
raises even more concern than I already had about the pending
potential of a flu pandemic