‘Armageddon Virus’ To Be Launched?

SYDNEY, Australia — Secret experiments are being conducted separately by U.S. and the Netherlands scientists to develop a mutant bird flu virus. They claim that their work will not be published in order to ward off an uncontrollable pandemic.

Being researched by the two teams are ways to alter the H5N1 avian influenza so that it can easily pass between mammals.
H5N1 first infected humans in 1997 and more than half of those infected died.

Some drug companies want the results of the studies released so that a hunt for vaccines can begin. There is concern the virus could mutate and mimic past pandemic flu outbreaks such as the “Spanish flu” of 1918-1919, which killed 50 million people, and outbreaks in 1957 and 1968 that killed three million.

Chairman of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, Paul Keim, described the results of the experiments as being such a dangerous biological weapon, it would not be controllable and whoever used it would doubtlessly kill their own people as well.

Attempts to censor details of controversial influenza experiments that created a highly infectious form of bird-flu virus are unlikely to stop the information from leaking out, according to scientists familiar with the research. Some said that the decision of censorship came too late because the information has already been widely shared among flu researchers.

Professor Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J., said that the research, which was funded by the U.S. government, should never have been done without first assessing the risks and benefits.

“The work posed risks that outweighed benefits and that were clearly foreseeable before the work was performed,” Professor Ebright said.