U.S. to create a bird flu virus mutation

Atlanta, GA, Mar. 24 (UPI) -- The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has begun a series of experiments to see how likely the bird flu virus could result in a human pandemic.

The six-month series of experiments seeks to simulate the mixing and matching of genes from the H5N1 avian flu virus that has plagued Asia and a common human flu virus that public-health experts fear could turn avian flu into a pandemic, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

CDC scientists inside an ultra-secure laboratory have started swapping the genes of the H5N1 avian virus with the genes of an H3N2 virus, the strain behind most recent human flu outbreaks.

The goal is to substitute the eight genes of each virus, one by one, with the eight genes from the other virus to see which of more than 250 possible combinations create flu viruses that could spread easily among humans.

The work responds to fears by global public health experts that the bird flu virus could mutate to form one that could spawn a global outbreak of the disease.

News source link
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050324-030452-8400r.htm

For more details read John Farndon's Everything You Need To Know: Bird Flu book and hear an MP3 podcast.

Ahhhhh and you wonder why I want to get out of Atlanta GA... humm... now someone there at the CDC has to have watched some scifi movies in there lifetime and didn't they learn anything? Tick tock people.. Tick tock... If you build it they will come.. errr.. If you make it they will use it and people will die... Stupid little humans...-Az