Scientists plan lethal bird flu strain for research

A worker at a wholesale poultry market in Hong Kong, in an effort to prevent an outbreak of potentially deadly bird flu in April, cleans cages used for transporting chickens. Photo: Kin Cheung, Associated Press

Washington --

Scientists who sparked an outcry by creating easier-to-spread versions of the bird flu for research want to try such experiments again using a worrisome new strain.

This time around, the U.S. government is promising extra scrutiny of such high-stakes research up front.

Since it broke out in China in March, the H7N9 bird flu has infected more than 130 people and killed 43. Some of the world's leading flu researchers argue that genetically altering that virus in high-security labs is key to studying how it might mutate in the wild to become a bigger threat to people, maybe even the next pandemic.

"We cannot prevent epidemics or pandemics, but we can accumulate critical knowledge ahead of time" to help countries better prepare and respond, Ron Fouchier of Erasmus University in the Netherlands said.

In letters published Wednesday in the journals Science and Nature, Fouchier and colleagues from a dozen research centers in the United States, Hong Kong and Britain outlined plans for what's called gain-of-function research - creating potentially stronger strains, including ones that might spread easily through the air between lab animals.

They say the work could highlight the most important mutations for public health officials to watch for as they monitor the virus' natural spread or determine how to manufacture vaccines.

The announcement is an attempt to head off the kind of international controversy that erupted in 2011 when Fouchier and Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, created easier-to-spread strains of another deadly kind of bird flu, the better-known H5N1.

The concerns: How to guard against laboratory accidents with the artificial strains, and whether publishing findings from the research could offer a blueprint for would-be bioterrorists. The H5N1 work eventually was published.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced an extra step: In addition to scientific review, researchers who propose creating easier-to-spread strains of the new H7N9 will have to pass a special review by a panel of experts who will weigh risks and potential benefits of the work.