green light. researchers raise a voluntary moratorium on controversial studies involving the H5N1 avian flu throughout the year. Here, a scientist working in 06 with a chicken egg containing the virus in a laboratory designated US government
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention / Greg Knobloch
nearly a year after they announced it, leading researchers flu ending a voluntary moratorium on certain types of controversial experiments involving the H5N1 avian influenza.
In a letter published online today Science and Nature , 40 researchers say the studies should restart now that scientists, government officials and public have had time to discuss the need for research and to impose new security measures. "[T] it is the voluntary moratorium have been achieved in some countries and are close to being met in others," they write, and researchers "have a public health responsibility to take this important work."
The movement essentially ended the H5N1 controversy, which began in late 2011, when two research teams showed how to redesign the virus that normally infects birds, so that it can move between the mammals. The discoveries have triggered intense global debate about whether newspapers should publish the results, some critics fear could be used by terrorists to trigger a deadly human pandemic. It also led to a discussion of whether scientists should make such studies "gain of function" at all. The results were finally published in Science and Nature , but the controversy has prompted governments in the US and elsewhere to impose increased surveillance on H5N1 research.
Today's letter comes as little surprise to those who have followed the controversy. The moratorium, which was announced January 20, 2012 in a letter signed by 39 prominent researchers H5N1, was originally intended to last only 60 days. But researchers extended it indefinitely in March 2012, when the debate intensified. Last year, however, many of those who agreed to the break began to lobby for lifting the moratorium that the United States and other nations finalized new systems of review proposals H5N1 gain function research and implemented safety guidelines for laboratories working with particularly dangerous forms of the virus. Last month, after an international meeting of two days on the issue organized by the US National Institutes of Health, which funded the two controversial studies, leading researchers and government officials said they were waiting for the moratorium to end soon .
The H5N1 research should resume in two stages, the researchers write in today's letter. scientists Influenza working in countries that have completed the safety rules and laboratory funding should now be free to resume experiments involving the re-engineering of the virus, they wrote. But "[s] Scientists are not expected to return to work in countries where, yet, no decision has been reached on the terms of the search for the transmission of H5N1. At that time, including research to United States and the United States financed conducted in other countries. "funded US researchers might not have to wait much longer to lift the moratorium, however, because officials are in the final stages of approval laboratory safety and consideration of the proposal guidelines.The Japanese government has also not yet finalized its rules for the H5N1 research, researchers say.
"There probably is not a scientific question in these time that was not so widely thrown to the public consultation that one, "one of the signatories of the letter, virologist Wendy Barclay of Imperial College London, said in a statement released by the science Media Centre in London. The moratorium was necessary, she said, because of a "reflex response from some quarters ... express the horror that scientists were preparing fatal diseases. It became clear that the public needed comfort and justification for these experiments. "
Now she and others from influenza want to return to try to understand how the H5N1 virus could become more dangerous to humans and how health officials would be able to stop a pandemic emerging. "[B] s the risk that exists in nature H5N1 virus capable of transmission in mammals may emerge," the researchers say, "the benefits of the job outweigh the risks."
in a conference call today, the main author of the letter said he does not expect researchers to be able to start the study immediately. "it takes time to stop the search, and it takes time to begin to save it, "said virologist Ron Fouchier of Erasmus MRC in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who led a controversial studies. But Fouchier already has an idea of what kind of studies he would like to do. Emphasis will determine exactly which mutations allow the H5N1 virus to move between mammals in the air or respiratory droplets. Researchers have found so far "five to nine" mutations that enable the transmission in mammals, he noted. Fouchier is also interested in whether the same mutations may make other H5N1 strains "in the air."
* Correction, 17 hours: The moratorium on H5N1 research was extended indefinitely in March 2012, not March 2011.
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