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Scientists resurrect virus that killed 50 million

Ian Sample— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Any biologist with expertise could recreate the microbe

LONDON: Scientists have recreated the 1918 Spanish flu virus, one of the deadliest ever to emerge, to the alarm of many researchers who fear it presents a serious security risk.

Undisclosed quantities of the virus are being held in a high-security U.S. Government laboratory in Atlanta, Georgia, after a nine-year effort to rebuild the agent that swept the globe in record time and claimed the lives of an estimated 50 million people.

The genetic sequence is also being made available to scientists online, a move which some fear adds a further risk of the virus being created in other labs.

The recreation was carried out in an attempt to understand what made the 1918 outbreak so devastating. Reporting in the journal Science, a team lead by Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Maryland, USA, shows that the recreated virus is extremely effective.

Tests revealed that the Spanish flu virus multiplied so rapidly that after four days, mice contained 39,000 times more flu virus than those injected with the more common strain of flu.

But other researchers warned on Wednesday the that virus could escape from the laboratory.

Publication of the work and the filing of the virus's genetic make-up to an online database followed an emergency meeting last week by the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, which concluded that the benefits of publishing the work outweighed the risks. Many scientists remained sceptical. ``Once the genetic sequence is publicly available, there's a risk that any molecular biologist with sufficient knowledge could recreate this virus,'' said Dr. John Wood of the Institute for Biological Standards in Potters Bar, U.K.

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