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Frontiers

Factual: Science & Nature

Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the researchers responsible

Programme exploring new ideas in science and meeting the scientists and researchers responsible for them, as well as hearing from their critics

Frontiers: Engineering Flu

Engineering Flu

06/06/2012

BBC Radio 4 - Frontiers, Engineering Flu

Genetically engineered bird flu - lessons for pandemic preparations. Kevin Fong reports.

Two suppressed reports showing how bird flu could be made more infectious have now been released. Kevin Fong asks what lessons for public health can be learned from GM viruses.

Two teams of virologists found themselves at the heart of bioterrorism maelstrom late last year when their studies on mutant bird flu were suppressed by US authorities. While security experts feared the reports were recipes for bioweapons of mass destruction, the researchers argued they held important lessons for the threat of natural flu pandemics developing in the wild.

Now the authorities have backed down and the reports have been released, Kevin Fong hears how tiny variations in the genes of bird flu can completely change the behaviour of the pathogens. And whether deliberate genetic manipulation in the lab can replicate the natural genetic variations occurring in farms around the world.

In 2009, the new strain of H1N1 flu emerged from a few villages in Mexico to infect the world in weeks. What experts fear is that a simple genetic change to H5N1 bird flu could allow it to spread as fast, but with far deadlier consequences. They argue that by identifying dangerous variants in the lab first, we'd be better prepared with vaccines ahead of the danger.

Producer Roland Pease.

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