Back in December, a US government panel took the highly
controversial position of calling for the censoring of
scientific work aimed at an understanding of how the H5N1 “bird
flu” virus can change to become directly transmissible between
humans. The virus is deadly to humans but can not be spread from
one person to another. Instead, close contact with infected
birds is required for humans to be infected. The work which the
National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (which, as
described in the Washington Post article linked above, “was
created after the anthrax bioterrorism attacks of 2001″) wanted
to censor involved experiments aimed at understanding precisely
what changes in the virus would be required for it to retain its
lethality while also becoming directly transmissible between
humans through processes such as the sneeze caught in the
disgusting high-speed photo from CDC seen here. After a very
long delay, the first of the two delayed papers was published in
Nature last month. Now, the second paper