On his virology blog, Dr. Vincent Racaniello describes the Origin of the H5N1 storm. Excerpt from a fascinating post:
I still wonder why the influenza virus H5N1 ferret transmission studies generated such fear and misunderstanding among the public, the press, and even some scientists. I still cannot fully explain what transpired, but now that the papers have been published some new clues have emerged.
In my opinion, the main catalyst of the storm was the article Scientists brace for media storm around controversial flu studies by Martin Enserink. It began with the inflammatory statement ‘Locked up in the bowels of the medical faculty building here and accessible to only a handful of scientists lies a man-made flu virus that could change world history if it were ever set free’. Fouchier said that he created ‘probably one of the most dangerous viruses you can make’.
Members of the NSABB were quoted as saying ‘I can’t think of another pathogenic organism that is as scary as this one’, and ‘This work should never have been done’.
This article presented a one-sided view because only Fouchier or NSABB members were quoted. I don’t understand why Fouchier made some of the statements that he did; perhaps he was quoted out of context. The NSABB members were on the way to restricting publication of the paper, so their views were clear.
What Enserink did not do – what he should have done – was to speak with other virologists. This he could not do because the manuscript describing the work had not been made public. He violated a main tenet of journalism, to present both sides of the story.
With the publication of the Fouchier and Kawaoka papers, it became immediately apparent that all of the inflammatory statements in the Enserink article are wrong. For example, after 10 passages in ferrets, an altered H5N1 virus does transmit in the air among ferrets, but inefficiently and without killing the animals. Hardly one of the most dangerous viruses you can make.
