Morning Briefing

"In a long-awaited study that helped prompt a contentious debate over the wisdom of conducting research that has the potential to help as well as harm, scientists reported Wednesday that they had engineered a mutant strain of [H5N1] bird flu that can spread easily between ferrets -- a laboratory animal that responds to flu viruses much as people do," the Los Angeles Times (Brown, 5/3). Published in the journal Nature, the study is "the first of two controversial papers about laboratory-enhanced versions of the deadly bird flu virus that initially sparked fears among U.S. biosecurity experts that it could be used as a recipe for a bioterrorism weapon," Reuters writes (Steenhuysen, 5/2). The U.S. National Security Advisory Board on Biosecurity "had asked journals to hold off publishing" the studies, but "[t]he panel later dropped its objections after it became clear the engineered viruses were less virulent than had been feared," according to the Washington Post (Brown, 5/2).