LONDON (Reuters) - The World
Health Organization issued a stern warning on Friday to scientists who have
engineered a highly pathogenic form of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, saying
their work carries significant risks and must be tightly controlled.
The United Nations health body
said it was "deeply concerned about the potential negative
consequences" of work by two leading flu research teams who this month
said they had found ways to make H5N1 into a easily transmissable form capable
of causing lethal human pandemics.
The work by the teams, one in
The Netherlands and one in the United States, has already prompted an
unprecedented censorship call from U.S. security advisers who fear that
publishing details of the research could give potential attackers the know-how
to make a bioterror weapon.
The U.S. National Science
Advisory Board for Biosecurity has asked two journals that want to publish the
work to make only redacted versions of studies available, a request to which
the journal editors and many leading scientists object.
In its first comment on the
controversy, the WHO said: "While it is clear that conducting research to
gain such knowledge must continue, it is also clear that certain research, and
especially that which can generate more dangerous forms of the virus....has
risks."
H5N1 bird flu is extremely
deadly in people who are directly exposed to it from infected birds. Since the
virus was first detected in 1997, about 600 people have contracted it and more
than half of them have died.
But so far it has not yet
naturally mutated into a form that can pass easily from person to person,
although many scientists fear this kind of mutation is likely to happen at some
point and will constitute a major health threat if it does.
MUTATIONS
Flu researchers around the
world have been working for many years trying to figure out which mutations
would give H5N1 the ability to spread easily from one person to another, while
at the same time maintaining its deadly properties.
The U.S. National Institutes of
Health funded the two research teams to carry out research into how the virus
could become more transmissible in humans, with the aim of gaining insight on
how to react if the mutation occurred naturally.
The WHO said such research
should be done "only after all important public health risks and benefits
have been identified" and "it is certain that the necessary
protections to minimize the potential for negative consequences are in
place."
The agency also said it was
vital that new rules on the sharing of viruses and scientific know-how were
enforced to ensure those countries at most immediate risk from H5N1, mainly
developing countries in Asia such as Indonesia, Vietnam and others, would
benefit from advances in research.
During the H1N1 swine flu pandemic
in 2009-2010, many developing countries complained they had no life-saving
antivirals or vaccines to combat the new virus, despite having made samples of
the virus available to researchers and pharmaceutical companies to develop the
medicines.
It is normally laboratories in
wealthy developed countries that have the level of scientific expertise needed
to work on complex flu viruses, while bird, or avian, flu viruses themselves
often come from less well developed Asian countries.
A new Pandemic Influenza
Preparedness Framework was agreed and adopted by all WHO member states in May
2011 to set rules for sharing flu viruses that have pandemic potential, and
sharing the benefits of the expertise gained.
"WHO considers it
critically important that scientists who undertake research with influenza
viruses with pandemic potential samples fully abide by the new
requirements," the U.N. agency said in its statement.
(Editing by Alistair Lyon)
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