GENEVA/LONDON — Two studies showing how
scientists mutated the H5N1 bird flu virus into a form that could cause a
deadly human pandemic will be published only after experts fully assess the
risks, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.
Speaking after a high-level meeting of flu
experts and U.S. security officials in Geneva, a WHO official said an agreement
had been reached in principle to keep details of the controversial work secret
until deeper risk analyses have been carried out.
"There is a preference from a public
health perspective for full disclosure of the information in these two studies.
However there are significant public concerns surrounding this research that
should first be addressed," said Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's assistant
director-general for health security and environment.
The WHO called the meeting to break a deadlock
between scientists who have studied the mutations needed to make H5N1 bird flu
transmit between mammals, and the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for
Biosecurity (NSABB), which wanted the work censored before it was published in
scientific journals.
Biosecurity experts fear mutated forms of the
virus that research teams in The Netherlands and the United States
independently created could escape or fall into the wrong hands and be used to
spark a pandemic worse than the 1918-19 outbreak of Spanish flu that killed up
to 40 million people.
WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said that because
of these fears, "there must be a much fuller discussion of risk and
benefits of research in this area and risks of virus itself".
But a scientist close to the NSABB who spoke
to Reuters immediately after the decision said the board was deeply
"frustrated" by it.
The only NSABB member attending the meeting
was infectious disease expert Paul Keim of Northern Arizona University and he
"got the hell beat out of him", the source said.
"It was a closed meeting dominated by flu
people who have a vested interest in continuing this kind of work," he
added.
The WHO said experts at the meeting included
lead researchers of the two studies, scientific journals interested in
publishing the research, funders of the research, countries who provided the
viruses, bioethicists and directors from several WHO-linked laboratories
specializing in influenza.
The H5N1 virus, first detected in Hong Kong in
1997, is entrenched among poultry in many countries, mainly in Asia, but so far
remains in a form that is hard for humans to catch.
It is known to have infected nearly 600 people
worldwide since 2003, killing half of them, a far higher death rate than the
H1N1 swine flu which caused a flu pandemic in 2009/2010.
Last year two teams of scientists - one led by
Ron Fouchier at Erasmus Medical Center and another led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka at
the University of Wisconsin - said they had found that just a handful of
mutations would allow H5N1 to spread like ordinary flu between mammals, and
remain as deadly as it is now.
This type of research is seen as vital for
scientists to be able to develop vaccines, diagnostic tests and anti-viral
drugs that could be deployed in the event of an H5N1 pandemic.
In December, the NSABB asked two leading
scientific journals, Nature and Science, to withhold details of the research
for fear it could be used by bioterrorists.
They said a potentially deadlier form of bird
flu poses one of the gravest known threats to humans and justified the
unprecedented call to censor the research.
The WHO voiced concern, and flu researchers
from around the world declared a 60-day moratorium on Jan. 20 on "any
research involving highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 viruses" that
produce easily contagious forms.
Fouchier, who took part in the two-day meeting
at the WHO which ended on Friday, said the consensus of experts and officials
there was "that in the interest of public health, the full paper should be
published" at some future date.
"This was based on the high public health
impact of this work and the need to share the details of the studies with a
very big community in the interest of science, surveillance and public health
on the whole," he told reporters.
In its current form, people can contract H5N1
only through close contact with ducks, chickens, or other birds that carry it,
and not from infected individuals.
But H5N1 can acquire mutations that allow it
to live in the upper respiratory tract rather than the lower, and the Dutch and
U.S. researchers found a way to make it travel via airborne droplets between
infected ferrets. Flu viruses are thought to behave similarly in the animals
and in people.
Asked about the potential bioterrorism risks
of his and the U.S. team's work, Fouchier said "it was the view of the
entire group" at the meeting that the risks that this particular virus or
flu viruses in general could be used as bioterrorism agents "would be
very, very slim".
"The risks are not nil, but they are
very, very small," he said.
Stephanie Nebehay and Kate Kelland
Reuters
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