Colorized transmission electron micrograph of Avian influenza A H5N1 viruses (in gold)WIKIMEDIA, CDCAn international group of influenza researchers have ended a year-long break in research aiming to engineer new and potentially dangerous strains of the H5NI avian flu virus.
In a letter published this week (January 23) in both Science and Nature, 40 researchers insisted that “the aims of the voluntary moratorium have been met in some countries and are close to being met in others,” and added that researchers “have a public-health responsibility to resume this important work.”
The move comes almost exactly a year after the researchers agreed to stop the work in response to an intense debate over whether it was safe to publish two papers that demonstrated how to engineer the virus, which usually infects birds, so that it could pass between mammals through the air. Critics feared that accidental or deliberate release of the news viruses could start a deadly human pandemic, and some questioned the value of doing ...
