Natural Society, Jan. 20, 2011The United States government recently blocked virologist Ron Fouchier from releasing the blueprints to develop heavily weaponized H5N1 bird flu virus thanks to pressure stemming from the alternative media, but now a new group of scientific labs have begun to recreate the findings and may release them to the public. The experiments involve mutating the virus a total of 5 times, making the strain highly contagious between ferrets — the very animal model used to study human flu infection.
Bioterrorism experts state that a public release of the data could result in a widespread pandemic of weaponized H5N1 that could endanger millions of lives. This is highlighted by the severe mortality rate of the disease, which has killed more than 1 in every 2 people that it infected. Paul Keim, chair of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, explained how volatile of a weapon the mutated bird flu could become:
“This is such a dangerous biological weapon, it would not be controllable. Whoever used it would doubtlessly decimate their own people as well,” Keim said.
Virologist Ron Fouchier, whose H5N1 research was originally funded and later shutdown by the U.S. government, is still pushing for the information to become public. Fouchier recently published an opinion piece in the journal Science calling for the research to be released in order to “better prepare for a scenario where the virus could mutate and become more deadly.” Amazingly, this is exactly what could happen if the findings were released in the first place as confirmed by bioterrorism experts.
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