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Ear to the Ground

Scientists Make Killer Flu Virus Even Deadlier

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Posted on Dec 27, 2011
Centers for Disease Control

More than half of the people infected with H5N1—the bird flu virus—are dead, so it’s a damned good thing the virus isn’t airborne. That is, until now. U.S.-funded researchers in the Netherlands have successfully engineered a viral H5N1 strain that can spread through the air, realizing fears of a potentially weaponized germ that infects easily and kills half its victims.  —PZS

The New York Times:

The discovery has led advisers to the United States government, which paid for the research, to urge that the details be kept secret and not published in scientific journals to prevent the work from being replicated by terrorists, hostile governments or rogue scientists.

Journal editors are taking the recommendation seriously, even though they normally resist any form of censorship. Scientists, too, usually insist on their freedom to share information, but fears of terrorism have led some to say this information is too dangerous to share.

Some biosecurity experts have even said that no scientist should have been allowed to create such a deadly germ in the first place, and they warn that not just the blueprints but the virus itself could somehow leak or be stolen from the laboratory.

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By CanDoJack, December 30, 2011 at 10:04 pm Link to this comment

Imagine how much of this kind of thing is being done that
the public does not know about.

Not that the public would do any about it. Especially now
that they can be imprisoned interminably as a terrorist
for complaining about the government spending its money on
medical genocide plans.

Report this

By Louis Pasteur, December 30, 2011 at 8:09 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

This is a BIG mistake, ever wonder how the end of the world comes about? Well folks,this is about as good of a clue as your gonna get. The Ignorance and vanity of a few idiots that call their selfs scientist and their even stupider financier’s.

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By diamond, December 28, 2011 at 12:47 pm Link to this comment

God Marian Griffith, your middle name must be gullible. They tried to do this (weaponizing bird flu) in the Czech Republic but the media got wind of it and a huge scandal ensued and the work was stopped. Now they have found a Dutch group to do this work (in secret) and the media either didn’t find out or didn’t want to know. If you can’t see the usefulness of this as a biological weapon and as a cash cow for the drug companies, with their vaccine mania, then you must be wearing your rose coloured glasses or your all purpose blinkers. You’re the kind of person who if they announced that every baby would be micro-chipped at birth and given a bar code would say, ‘It’s only for their own good’.

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By Marian Griffith, December 28, 2011 at 12:49 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Was this not discussed here a month or two back already?

Anyway, what the researchers did was finding out how many changes have to occur to change a deadly but containable virus into a pandemic inducing one. The answer was five or six (depending on the source) exchanges with genes that already occur naturally in other strains of the influenza virus. Since it is known that viruses frequently swap genes if they occur in a body at the same time this is just a matter of time before it actually happens naturally rather than in a laboratory.
I have no idea what the funders of this research intended but the researchers themselves explained they wanted to publish the article to give WHO experts a better understanding what they have to screen H5N1 outbreaks for to see if it is getting closer to a pandemic and when to start quarantaining entire countries.

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By CanDoJack, December 27, 2011 at 11:11 pm Link to this comment

Ahhhhhhhhh, give pessimism time. Within a year people
might be clamoring to buy this product over the counter
praying to the god of chance for a better than 2 to 1 odds
on death.

Report this

By do over, December 27, 2011 at 11:02 pm Link to this comment

The culture of death raises it’s ugly head and smiles.

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By gerard, December 27, 2011 at 8:46 pm Link to this comment

Hello, purplewolf:  It’s not that this country is any more atrocious than a number of others I could name.  But it’s that this is my country and yours, and we are responsible for it, partially or totally, whichever comes first. As to the weapons questions:
In the last century the US has rather gone overboard for violence and the power of killing.  A death wish, maybe, a suicidal impulse due to desperation, confusion and hopelessness.  Israel shows similar signs of decadence, and currently certain dicatators here and there.  Occupy Wall Street is about the only hopeful sign stateside. May it thrive and grow!
And may we support it with everything we have to give!  Love.

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By purplewolf, December 27, 2011 at 7:03 pm Link to this comment

Gerard: like your newest name for America.

Silenus: You know, they want to deny women the control of their own bodies pertaining to pregnancy, birth and how many children that women want and instead want to force every pregnancy to term and on the other hand they are always looking for ways to kill us all off because there are too many people on the planet.

Why does this country always look at anything new as a weapon first ?

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PatrickHenry's avatar

By PatrickHenry, December 27, 2011 at 5:33 pm Link to this comment

Who is afraid of Iran developing the bomb?

I’m more scared of these guys.

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By Silenus, December 27, 2011 at 4:38 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Well, the world is overpopulated and peak oil, environmental destruction, and financial collapse will reduce the carrying capacity well below the current level of population.

It really wouldn’t be unreasonable for a government to unleash a killer virus to reduce population. So it really doesn’t sound like much of a wacky conspiracy theory to say that this virus could be used for population control at some point, when conflict over diminishing resources becomes too dangerous for the powerful.

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PatrickHenry's avatar

By PatrickHenry, December 27, 2011 at 4:29 pm Link to this comment

Again this demonstrates the U.S. Government has too much of our taxpayer money and finds dangerous things to throw it at.

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By gerard, December 27, 2011 at 1:47 pm Link to this comment

Atrocities R US

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By diamond, December 27, 2011 at 1:30 pm Link to this comment

America the beautiful strikes again. I’m sure the champagne corks are popping at the CIA. It was developed to be a biological weapon and we all know who the ‘terrorists’ are. The problem is, they’ve got all the guns and all the tax money. And, of course, the drug companies will be working on a vaccine, otherwise known as a license to print money.

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By Tim Kelly, December 27, 2011 at 12:46 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

The scientists simply figured out how to do what Nature was going to do inevitably - mutate the virus.  The scientist have been quite open that this was done with relative ease and not with any sort of super special technology.  Their purpose is to develop a vaccine against what will inevitably be a highly virulent virus.  The real story is that the U.S. gov’t funding agencies are asking the journals Nature and Science to suppress how the mutation is done, under the guise that it could be used as a bio-weapon.  As the article says, some experts think scientists should have been prevented from even doing this.  This is about secrecy, not safety.  The real threat is the continued assault by the U.S. on learning - the undeclared “War on Knowledge.”

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