Editor's Concern Over Bird Flu

This is ironic on so many levels.

Organizations can try censor as they wish....at their peril. The internet will out anybody whistling and looking the other way. 'Publish and be damned' is no bad thing. Caveats can be added, and judicious editing used. Almost every major journal has been caught out by either hyping something too much or ignoring it. I'm now going to google "controversial H5N1 research". I may well follow that up with "<whatever> controversy/conspiracy". This is the internet age, not some dusty 1950's library.

Cheers. One thing for certain, they've generated so much publicity for the research, a lot more people will be interested in reading it!

The question, how do mutations occur that make it easy for a virus to jump to a different host species, is an important one, and this has been discussed in the research, especially concerning bird flu, for some time. Understanding how this occurs is relevant to developing strategies to prevent it. Since the nature of the required mutation is already well understood afaict, I can only assume that the new research describes a specific method of inducing the mutation.

I do not really understand the fear that an influenza or bird flu virus would be used for bioterrorism. There are several reasons why a deadly infectious virus is not a handy weapon. (1) Virus is difficult to culture or keep alive outside a host. (2) This presents containment and exposure issues immediately for anyone intending to launch such a 'weapon'. (3) There is little or no targetting capability. Once it is transmitted to the public, the virus will be equally deadly to 'friend' and 'foe', and there is no way to ensure that it would not spread and infect the same people or country that started it. (4) There's no way a terrorist nation could develop a flu-weapon, make enough vaccine (at least 6 months), and innoculate its own people before attacking someone else (another 3-6 months), without the news of it being spied or just leaking out by one loose lips or another!!. I reckon.

The expertise, special equipment etcetera required to handle and engineer deadly viruses, is not something you find in a back alley or home kitchen. (*) The persons capable of using virus as a bioweapon are the same people who belong to that circle of researchers, who would be on the 'exclusive access' list, if indeed the details are held back from publication. And don't tell me that the real 'bioweapons' interests are not on the list. Name a nation with bioweapons program, I assure you, they absolutely have someone on that list and will be reading the full monty, if they haven't already.

Absolutely no security is gained by preventing the public from reading about this.