%0 Journal Article
%T Dangerous for ferrets: lethal for humans?
%A Peter C Doherty
%A Paul G Thomas
%J BMC Biology
%D 2012
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1741-7007-10-10
%X The Fouchier experiment was the talk of the Malta meeting, though not because of safety concerns. Influenza virologists had been debating for years whether these HPAI H5N1 viruses could ever change in a way that would allow them to transmit readily between human beings. Informed opinion was strongly divided. We all knew that, given exposure to what has been assumed to be a large virus dose from an infected bird, people can develop severe H5N1 disease, with a very high death rate (345 fatalities out of 584 cases since 2003) [3]. A few instances where family members may have been secondarily infected are on record, while two recent cases with no known history of avian contact have been reported from China. We are not there yet, but what these ferret adaptation studies suggest (though by no means prove) is that a 'human' H5N1 pandemic virus may indeed emerge from nature.The issue of safety blew up much later when it came to publishing the Fouchier et al. findings. Should these genetic changes be 'out there' for all to see? Might that information be used by sophisticated bioterrorists? The furor about whether these ferret adaptation studies should ever have been done and, if so, whether the results should be openly published came as something of a surprise to us. Though some medical epidemiologists did raise the issue of risk, the resurrection of the catastrophic 1918 H1N1 virus by Jeff Taubengerger, Johan Hultin et al. more than a decade back met with general acclaim as an undoubted scientific achievement. The 1918 virus killed around 50 million people but nobody, so far as we recall, objected when (from 1999) segments of the virus sequence started to appear in the journals. Was the difference that there was, at that time, more trust in those who work in high security government laboratories? Then, much of the 1918 sequence was published before 9/11, 2001. The world has changed.Of course, citizens, commentators, funding agencies and national governments have every righ
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/10/10