Via ScienceInsider: Free to Speak, Kawaoka Reveals Flu Details While Fouchier Stays Mum. Excerpt:
Influenza virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka finally told a captive audience here the key details of the study that helped trigger an exhaustive review by a U.S. biosecurity panel as well as one of the most intense bioethical debates in years.
Speaking at a 2-day meeting at the Royal Society, Kawaoka revealed the four mutations that made a reassortant flu virus more transmissible among ferrets through tiny droplets—a finding that had triggered worries that it could cause an influenza pandemic.
By contrast, Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands—the main author of the other flu study reviewed by the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB)—was forced to stick to a skeletal talk that contained few details about his own work, as he has been doing since he first presented the study at a meeting in Malta in September. The Dutch government is currently holding up the release of Fouchier's study because it believes it might violate export-control rules.
