Man-made super-flu could kill half humanity ...

**guyguy** · 11-28-2011, 10:15 PM

A virus with the potential to kill up to half the world’s population has been made in a lab. Now academics and bioterrorism experts are arguing over whether to publish the recipe, and whether the research should have been done in the first place.
The virus is an H5N1 bird flu strain which was genetically altered to become much more contagious. It was created by Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who first presented his work to the public at an influenza conference in Malta in September.

https://rt.com/news/bird-flu-killer-strain-119/

**letric** · 11-29-2011, 02:05 AM

Originally Posted by guyguy

A virus with the potential to kill up to half the world’s population has been made in a lab. Now academics and bioterrorism experts are arguing over whether to publish the recipe, and whether the research should have been done in the first place.
The virus is an H5N1 bird flu strain which was genetically altered to become much more contagious. It was created by Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who first presented his work to the public at an influenza conference in Malta in September.

https://rt.com/news/bird-flu-killer-strain-119/

Disturbing ...

**Falcon** · 11-29-2011, 06:33 AM

Any terrorist who wants to copy this recipe knows jack Sat about flu. Fouchier did it, but there are many mutations possible and in fact that's what all the fuss is about since '05 with h5n1. Nothing novel.

**edyle** · 11-29-2011, 12:45 PM

Seems to me the developers should be tried in Criminal Court for a Crime against Humanity.

Artificially created VIRUSES are a serious issue.
Viruses mutate all the time; most of you wont know this but the recent flu outbreak a few years ago was a lab creation spliced together from human, bird and swine viruses.
Anyway back to my point; viruses mutate all the time; the population develops resistance to the new variants with are only a small variation over existing viruses; no big deal; some people might die of the flu, especially elderly and newborns.

But when a COMPLETELY NEW virus SUDDENLY appears in the population, it's like everybody is taken by surprise. The immune systems don't yet have resistance to the new virus, and the resistance develops in the population THROUGH THE PERSONS who SURVIVE; you have to have SURVIVORS first before the population can have effective resistance to the new virus.

There are not CURES for viruses in general; at best biochemists can develop methods to attack/cripple some unique peculiarity extant on the viral structure IF such exists and IF they can do so SAFELY without damaging relevant human structures (an unlikely probability).