As Scientists Argue Over The Ethics Of Bird Flu Research, H7N9 Continues to Wreak Havoc in China

Scientists conducting controversial research on different strains of the bird flu are pointing to cases of a newly-emerged mutation in China as justification for their work.

The research, called "gain of function" or GOF, centers around identifying what mutations enable the virus to jump from animals to humans with the hope of identifying how dangerous new viruses are and to what degree people and governments need to guard against it.

Sure enough, two teams of researchers announcd in late 2011 that they had developed a strain of the H1N1 virus transmissable among mammals through droplets in the air.

However, fearing that their discoveries would fall into the wrong hands, the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) asked the teams to delete key details from their articles published in the journals Science and Nature.

"The fear was that they were making a monster," Wendy Barclay, a flu virologist at Imperial College London, told a reporter from Reuters.

The scientists agreed to do so under the condition that the government provide a place for backroom chat among researchers and public health experts.

Then, in early 2012, leading H1N1 researchers agreed to a year-long moratorium in order to allow time for deliberation on an international level on the subject, as announced in a statement published on both journals' sites.

The year is up now and scientists are concerned that their time away from their research may have consequences in terms of human lives as they work to grapple with the current strain of bird flu that, as of Thursday, had infected 14 and four dead according to state media.

"At the moment we don't know whether we should go for a full-blown alert or whether we can sit back and say this is just a minor thing," flu researcher Ab Osterhaus told Reuters. "(To answer that) we need to know what this virus needs to become transmissable."

Barclay shares Osterhaus' concerns, telling the news outlet that the new strain, called H7N9, is proof that the fight against this class of virus is one that will be around for a long time.

Arguing against them, however, is Simon Wain-Hobson, chair of the Foundation for Vaccine Research in the United States.

"The world has never been more densley populated," he wrote in Nature last week. "Is it appropriate for civilian scientists to make microbes more dangerous."

For Osterhaus, however, it's a game of cost-benefit analysis.

"This virus might be on the brink of gaining function transmissibility (in humans)," he said. "I think it's crucial to know the rules of the game.