Controversial research into making bird flu easier to spread in people is to resume after a year-long pause.
Some argue the research is essential for understanding how viruses spread and could be used to prevent deadly pandemics killing millions of people.
Research was stopped amid fierce debate including concerns about modified viruses escaping the laboratory or being used for terrorism.
The moratorium gave authorities time to fully assess the safety of the studies.
A type of bird flu known as H5N1 is deadly and has killed about half the people who have been infected.
It has not caused millions of deaths around the world because it lacks the ability to spread from one person to another. Cases tend to come from close contact with infected birds.
Scientists at the Erasmus University in the Netherlands and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US discovered it would take between five and nine mutations in the virus' genetic code to allow it to start a deadly pandemic.
Dangerous science?
Their research was the beginning of a long-running furor involving scientists, governments and publishers of scientific research.
It is easy to see why designing a more dangerous version of H5N1 would raise concerns. A virus which can kill half of the people it infects and could spread rapidly from person to person is the stuff of Hollywood disaster movies.
However, the research could reveal important insights that could prevent such an infection arising in the wild and help build defences just in case.
The studies in ferrets showed that five to nine mutations were needed to get H5N1 spreading through the air from animal to animal.
This helps health officials tracking the virus as they can keep an eye out for danger signs in the virus' genetic code. Two of the mutations have been seen in the wild - but alone are not enough to set alarm bells ringing.
Getting an idea of what a highly infectious H5N1 virus would look like can also be used to help design effective vaccines and anti-viral medications.
This controversy is about balancing risks - do you study the virus with a remote chance of it getting out of the laboratory or do you avoid such research and miss out on discoveries which could save lives in the next pandemic?
The US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity asked academic journals not to publish key parts of the findings. It was concerned terrorists would use the details to develop a biological weapon.
It provoked outcry among some scientists who said their academic freedom was being restricted. Other scientists said the risk of the virus spreading was too great for such research to take place and described it as a folly.
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Originally Posted by brushfire
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