We can worry less that a newly created bird flu virus might kill tens or hundreds of millions of people if it escaped from the laboratory. But there is still some residual danger. And we remain appalled at the slipshod way in which this research was authorized despite its potential dangers to public health and national security.
The tale is a complicated one, but worth understanding since this is not the last time that this country and the world will face serious questions about scientific research and biosecurity. And government officials must ensure that, going forward, the process of approving such experiments works a lot more rationally.
The most worrying experiments were carried out by Dutch scientists and financed by this country’s National Institutes of Health. The researchers started with the bird flu virus, which seldom infects humans but is highly lethal when it does. With five mutations they made it transmissible through the air among ferrets and possibly humans.
Based on statements by the lead scientist that the virus retained its lethality, we urged in January that it be destroyed or studied only in a few high-containment laboratories, and that nothing be published about the experiments or, at a minimum, that details that might help a terrorist be redacted. In March, after the lead scientist, in a turnabout, said his new virus did not actually spread all that easily and was not lethal to ferrets when it did so, we called for clarification by an independent arbiter, like the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. That is the group of nongovernmental experts that originally voted 22 to 0 to recommend that the paper be published only after details on specific mutations and how they were made were redacted.
Now that board has changed its mind. In late March, after reviewing a revised version of the paper and grilling the Dutch scientist, it voted 12 to 6 to recommend publication with none of the details excised.
IMO, the Globalists have always wanted a “bug” like the pneumonic-plague–one sneeze and tens of thousands could be dead within hours, and the fact that Dutch scientists are used, implies to me that the Bilder”-BORG-ers” have been funding the effort. The Bilder-BORG-ers would probably ascribe to the “Georgia-Tombstone”, where 500 million are the “maintenence” population for the Earth, presumably because that will leave enough Serfs to serve those tangential to the Crowned-heads/Elites of the EU. While the BORG-ers may fund such horrors, they gain plausible deniability for its USE, by making security lax, inviting over Islamic terrorists/other representatives of client-states captive of the remaining Commie-powers. N. Korea/Demon-crat Presidents of the USA for Red China,–Syrians, Iranians, other muslims for the Russians or muslim groups acting simply by themselves. One and a half million Christians were slaughtered back when Islam was working its way west across the lower mediterranean basin, the tens of millions in the EU would be to scale for the “New Caliphate” which the EU, Will be morphed-into, unless Breitbart-clones spring-up like the weeds they are, winnowing the Socialists that are so stupid, they won’t Realize they were WORKING FOR the “Caliphate” until their heads are rolling in lanes adjacent to the “no-go” Islamic gettos. A male cassandra, I miss a lot and hope I’m wrong, wrong, wrong, but Islam is a Cobra of religions, decidedly different, because it is Religion coupled to Fascism(Sharia). The EU is fascinated with Cobras/Fascism, and think they can sway back & forth, mesmerizing the Islamists, but the Islamists are much smarter than a it’s Globalist-handlers, and may fatally “bite” the Gnomes of the EU, on the way to its Islamic, Borgian-Assimulation. A Star-Trekian analogy would be where the Borg are “assimulated” by the Computers of their own “Collective.” God’s Grace to us all, amen.
The biggest threat to the health of the human race is freezing to death if the eco-nazis get their way!
Can they make a virus that will make leftists sane? Nah.