SEAN MCCABE
In September 2011, Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, presented some shocking results at the annual conference of the European Scientific Working Group on Influenza: he and his colleagues had created a mutant version of the H5N1 avian flu virus that could be transmitted through the air between ferrets. Not long after, news began to circulate of a similar creation in the lab of Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Fouchier and Kawaoka submitted their studies for publication to Science and Nature, respectively, sparking a heated debate over the potential consequences of publishing such research, whether the risky viruses should have been created at all, and, of course, how comparable work should be regulated going forward. In the following ...
