This story comes to us from The Bubblehead Les New Network, BLNN
CHICAGO (Reuters) – A U.S. scientific advisory board Tuesday asked two scientific journals to leave out data from research studies on a lab-made version of bird flu that could spread more easily to humans, fearing it could be used as a potential weapon.
The U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity has asked the journals Nature and Science to publish redacted versions of the studies by two research groups that reportedly created forms of the H5N1 avian flu that could easily jump between ferrets — typically considered a sign that the virus could spread quickly among humans.
Both journals said in separate statements they are working with the advisory board and taking the matter seriously, but they chafed at the notion of scientific censorship.
The bird flu virus is extremely deadly in people who are directly exposed to infected birds, but so far, it has not mutated into a form that can pass easily from person to person.
According to the journals, two research labs have submitted papers showing how to make the virus more transmissible in humans, and the NSABB, an independent expert committee that advises the Department of Health and Human Services and other federal agencies, wants to keep this information from falling into the wrong hands.
Now Microbiology is WAYYYY outside my wheelhouse, so I don’t know if this research is entirely for military logistics, or if it can be used to help find a treatment, vaccine, or cure for this virus if a hostile entity, or the biggest bitch of them all, Mother Nature, figures this shit out.
That being said with a Predator Drone being stolen by Iran, and the East Anglia Email Cabal was leaked on the web, as Les said to me “Wiki-Leaks will just publish it anyway”. The horses are already out of the barn, no worries about shutting the door or not. Now we just need to make sure to have contingencies for everything.
i’m not a microbiologist either, but the rumors i’ve heard from one person who’s a research virologist (this lady) go down these lines…
– random mutation and recombination’s constantly cooking up new flu varieties anyway, southeast asia’s rural backcountry’s one giant new-flu incubator, most any variety’s likely to happen there eventually;
– the most dangerous flu likely to happen is a bird flu that can spread from human to human, not just bird to human, and there’s a couple likely ways that could come about naturally, so it’s probably just a matter of time until it does;
– so if we cook one of them up artificially, we can get a head start on studying it and maybe dealing with it. besides,
– you’d have to be a homicidal maniac to try to use a flu virus as a bioweapon anyway, it spreads just WAY too easily, and too quickly, and is too hard to create good vaccines against, and can’t really be treated other than by prevention (vaccines) so if you get it you’re SOL, which are all of them things you kindof don’t want in a bioweapon. so it’s strictly medical research, this, not weapons research.
learning how to make a flu virus more transmissible in humans seems like it’d involve learning what causes a flu virus to have good human-to-human transmissibility. which also seems like a reasonable thing to want to know if you want to prevent a flu pandemic. so, yeah, while this is obviously dangerous research it seems to me like it’s at least potentially legitimate. whether the risk is worthwhile or not i’m not qualified to speak about.
Yeah it doesn’t sound like it would be very controllable as a weapon, it would probably wind up infecting everyone eventually with the way global travel and commerce is in this age.
I remember a guy at USAMRIID saying it used to drive him nuts that the Soviets kept messing with biologicals that, if ever used, would be as big a threat to them as to any enemy.
And then we have clowns like the Iranian regime who believe chaos and horror will help bring the 12th Imam back; this would be just the ticket.
Can’t remember the book, but read about a idea from China for more efficient food growing: chicken pens above hog pens above fish ponds, efficient use of space and the droppings would go to the fish. However, some people crapped bricks and pointed out that if there’s a better setup for getting bird viruses into a position to jump to pigs- which generally leads to jumping to humans- they couldn’t see what it was. Which means they’re probably doing it anyway ’cause the Middle Kingdom knows better than those nasty foreign people, etc.