LONDON - A scientist researching a
potentially highly lethal airborne version of the H5N1 bird flu virus said on
Wednesday he must be allowed to pursue his studies if deadly pandemics are to
be prevented.
Despite declaring last week a 60-day
moratorium on the studies to allay security fears, Yoshihiro Kawaoka argued in
a commentary in the journal Nature it was urgent and vital that his work
continue.
Kawaoka, of Tokyo University and the
University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States, is a lead researcher on
one of two recent studies showing how H5N1 can be transmitted through airborne
droplets, and his work is at the centre of an international row over whether
its findings should be censored.
In December a US advisory board asked two
leading journals, Nature and Science, to withhold details of both studies for
fear it could be used by bioterrorists. The journals have accepted the studies
but have not yet said if they will publish them in full.
Last week, the two teams - Kawaoka's and a
second team led by Ron Fouchier at Erasmus Medical College in the Netherlands -
said they would temporarily suspend their research because of the concerns.
But writing in Nature on Wednesday, Kawaoka
argued it would be "irresponsible" and dangerous not to continue
researching highly pathogenic bird flu viruses.
Flu viruses constantly mutate and can cause
pandemics.
Kawaoka said some elements of worrying
mutations that both teams had predicted were possible had already been detected
in H5N1 viruses circulating naturally in certain countries.
"Some people have argued that the risks
of such studies - misuse and accidental release, for example - outweigh the
benefits," he wrote.
"I counter that H5N1 viruses circulating
in nature already pose a threat, because influenza viruses mutate constantly
and can cause pandemics with great losses of life."
He cited the 1918-19 Spanish flu outbreak that
killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million people worldwide.
"We
cannot give up"
First detected in 1997 in Hong Kong, H5N1 has
devastated duck and chicken flocks in Cambodia, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia
and Iran, and has reached the Middle East and Europe through wild birds.
Lab analysis has confirmed that 578 people
have been infected since 2003. Of those, 340 have died - a death rate never
before seen from a flu virus.
By comparison, the Spanish flu killed an
estimated 0.5 per cent of those infected, while seasonal flu in the United
States kills about 0.003 per cent of those who catch it.
People can contract H5N1 in its current form
only through close contact with ducks, chickens or other birds that carry it,
and not from infected people.
Kawaoka's and Fouchier's teams have found that
with just three induced mutations the virus can become transmissible through
air between ferrets, which are considered good models of how flu viruses behave
in people.
It is not known whether the mutant H5N1 can be
spread between people in a similar way, but the fear is that it might,
unleashing a highly lethal pandemic.
Kawaoka argued it "would be irresponsible
not to study the underlying mechanisms" of how these mutations might come
about, and said this research had implications the world's ability to be
prepare itself for another flu pandemic.
"It is imperative that these viruses are
monitored closely so that eradication efforts and counter-measures...can be
focused on them," he wrote.
He argued that the US National Science
Advisory Board for Biosecurity's request for publication of the studies to be
censored would not eliminate the possibility of experiments being replicated by
people bent on doing harm.
In reality, he said, there is already enough
information out there to allow someone to make a transmissible virus.
Kawaoka proposed that instead of halting or
censoring research, the international community should convene to discuss how
to minimize risk while also supporting scientific discovery.
"Flu investigators (including me) have
agreed to a 60-day moratorium on avian flu transmission research because of the
current controversy," he said. "But our work remains urgent - we
cannot give up."
Kate Kelland
Reuters
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