Contoversial studies show how H5N1 can jump natural barrier, advisory board says
From CIDRAP News
The core of a US biosecurity advisory board’s concern about two controversial, as-yet-unpublished studies on H5N1 viruses is that the studies have shown how to remove the apparent natural barrier that keeps the viruses from spreading efficiently in mammals, members of the board said in statements published today.
Removal of this barrier creates the potential for a catastrophic pandemic if such mutant viruses were released by bioterrorists or by accident, said members of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), which has focused mainly on the perceived risk of bioterrorism. The board has recommended withholding details of the studies from publication.
“The artificial evolution of a new mammal-adapted H5N1 virus, as reported in these two papers, has removed the natural barriers that might have existed. Accomplishing this in the lab, however, doesn’t mean that it can occur naturally,” said Paul Keim, PhD, acting chair of the NSABB, in a question-and-answer interview published in Nature.
A statement signed by all the NSABB members was published simultaneously in Nature and Science. The findings of the two studies are “very important because, before these experiments were done, it was uncertain whether avian influenza A/H5N1 could ever acquire the capacity for mammal-to-mammal transmission,” the statement says.
“Now that this information is known, society can take steps globally to prepare for when nature might generate such a virus spontaneously.”
Although NSABB members have talked to reporters in recent weeks, today’s publications were the first formal statements from the board since its recommendation against full publication was announced by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Dec 20. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) endorsed the board’s recommendation and forwarded it to Science and Nature, the journals considering publishing the studies.