Once-Banned Bird Flu Study Yields Sobering Findings

June 22nd, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

THURSDAY, June 21 (HealthDay News) — As few as five mutations
are enough to make the H5N1 avian influenza virus transmissible via
airborne droplets between ferrets, according to a new, highly anticipated
report.

Because the flu virus affects ferrets and humans in a similar way, the
new findings, appearing in the June 22 issue of the journal
Science, may shed light on how likely it is that an avian or “bird
flu” virus will become pandemic and spread rapidly between humans.

If a new virus emerged, humans could essentially be defenseless against
it.

The paper is the second of two whose publication was banned by the U.S.
government, which feared that publishing specifics on a sequence of the
H5N1 bird flu might prompt bioterrorists to develop and unleash a
pandemic.

In April, however, the controversial ban was lifted and the first paper
was published in the journal Nature.

Bruce Alberts, the editor-in-chief of Science, speaking at a
press conference Wednesday, said he hoped publication of this and a
companion paper “will help to make the world safer by stimulating more
scientists and policy makers to focus on preparing defenses [against a
pandemic].”

Asked whether the report might increase the chances that a rogue
scientist would be able to replicate the work, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director
of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he
thought “the benefit of the paper in stimulating thoughts and in
stimulating ways to better understand [the virus] far outweighs any
nefarious use of the information.”

In order to understand how avian flu viruses could become airborne in
mammals, the authors of the first Science study first introduced
three mutations thought to increase the ability of the virus to spread
between mammals into an existing strain of the H5N1 virus.

The virus was then put in the nose of ferrets. Researchers then swabbed
the virus from the ferret’s noses and introduced it into another set of
ferrets, and then another — tracking all the time how the virus evolved.

After 10 of these “passages,” the virus had acquired the ability to
transmit via aerosol or respiratory droplets.

In total, five mutations gave the virus the ability to spread through
the air. This included the three initially introduced by the researchers,
plus two more that evolved on their own while the virus was passing from
ferret to ferret.

The airborne virus did not, however, kill the ferrets, said study
co-author Ron Fouchier, of the department of virology at Erasmus Medical
Center in the Netherlands.

And the antiviral drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir) was effective against the
new strain of virus in the ferrets.

A second paper in the same issue of Science found that two of
the mutations needed to make the virus spread between mammals already are
seen frequently in combination with each other in nature, meaning as few
as three additional mutations might be all that is needed to result in a
virus similar to the one constructed in the first paper.

Researchers don’t know at this point how likely it would be for all
these mutations to occur in a single host, said co-author Derek Smith,
professor of infectious disease informatics at the University of Cambridge
in England.

Taken together, the Nature and the new Science papers
showed different ways viruses can change to potentially infect humans.

The earlier paper showed that mutations plus reassortment (when genetic
information from more than one species is mixed) produced
transmissibility, and, indeed, this fit with long-held theories that such
reassortment would be necessary for a pandemic to occur.

But the current paper showed that mutations alone were sufficient.

“We can get a transmissible virus by mutation only and by a combination
of mutation and reassortment,” Fauci said.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on bird flu.