Where Do We Go From Here?

We have brought back to life an agent of near-biblical destruction. It killed more people in six months than were killed in the four years of World War I. It killed more humans than any other disease of similar duration in the history of the world, says Alfred W. Crosby, who wrote a history of the 1918 pandemic. And, notes New Scientist magazine, when the re-created virus was given to mice in heavily quarantined laboratories in Atlanta, it killed the mice more quickly than any other flu virus ever tested .

Now that I have your attention, consider, with appropriate trepidation, the third element of this story: What to do with this knowledge? Not only has the virus been physically re-created, but its entire genome has also now been published for the whole world, good people and very bad, to see.

The decision to publish was a very close call, terrifyingly close.

On the one hand, we need the knowledge disseminated. We've learned from this research that the 1918 flu was bird flu, "the most bird-like of all mammalian flu viruses," says Jeffery Taubenberger, lead researcher in unraveling the genome. There is a bird flu epidemic right now in Asia that has infected 117 people and killed 60. It has already developed a few of the genomic changes that permit transmission to humans. Therefore, you want to put out the knowledge of the structure of the 1918 flu, which made the full jump from birds to humans, so that every researcher in the world can immediately start looking for ways to anticipate, monitor, prevent and counteract similar changes in today's bird flu.

We are essentially in a life-or-death race with the bird flu. Can we figure out how to preempt it before it figures out how to evolve into a transmittable form with 1918 lethality that will decimate humanity? To run that race we need the genetic sequence universally known -- not just to inform and guide but to galvanize new research.

On the other hand, resurrection of the virus and publication of its structure open the gates of hell. Anybody, bad guys included, can now create it. Biological knowledge is far easier to acquire for Osama bin Laden and friends than nuclear knowledge. And if you can't make this stuff yourself, you can simply order up DNA sequences from commercial laboratories around the world that will make it and ship it to you on demand. Taubenberger himself admits that "the technology is available."

And if the bad guys can't make the flu themselves, they could try to steal it. That's not easy. But the incentive to do so from a secure facility could not be greater.

H5N1 Avian Flu is the nasty critter that scientists are very worried about. It's managed to spread through much of Asia and appears to have made its way to Turkey and parts of Europe. Aggressive methods of killing entire bird populations are underway in some areas in order to make sure that the birds do not transmit the virus to people, or harbor a virus that might mutate into one that can be spread by person to person contact. If this particular virus manages that mutation, the consequences will be harsh - due to modern travel - the flu could spread around the world in record time killing huge numbers of people. Thus far, no signs of the mutation have been found, but it may only be a matter of time.

That's why the research into the 1918 flu pandemic are so important. They provide scientists with clues as to flu development, where mutations might occur, and other details on improving treatment and vaccines.

The problem as Krauthammer sees it is the vulnerability of the research to be used by terrorists or other bad actors who might be able to steal or infiltrate those facilities working with the Spanish flu or H5N1 and setting it loose on the world or use the recently released data on the flu genome, which would have potentially devastating results It would make the AIDS epidemic look like a walk in the park. Breast cancer? Ha. When tens of millions become infected all within weeks of each other, and millions more die within a short period of time, it puts all those other diseases, bad as they are, into perspective.

UPDATE:
Say Anything has put together 10 things you ought to know about the Bird Flu/Avian Flu/H5N1. Some of the stuff is common sense, but it is definitely a must read.

Technorati: avian flu, spanish flu, pandemic UPDATE - bird flu, H5N1.