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How to Research Deadly Germs Without Helping Terrorists: View
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Bird flu kills more than half the people who catch it. The saving grace of H5N1 is that it’s not easily spread among humans. Almost all of the 600 people who have been infected by the virus in its 14-year history have picked it up from infected poultry.
It was understandable, then, that ears perked up in September when Dutch researchers at a virology conference in Malta announced they had created a new form of H5N1 that was highly transmissible, mammal to mammal. (Specifically, in the lab, it was ferret to ferret.)