Shots - Health News Mon December 31, 2012 Research Moratoriums
And Recipes For Superbugs: Bird Flu In 2012 Originally published
on Mon December 31, 2012 5:46 am For scientists who study a
dangerous form of bird flu, 2012 is ending as it began — with
uncertainty about what the future holds for their research, but
a hope that some contentious issues will soon be resolved. Last
January, dozens of flu experts around the world agreed to what
was supposed to be a 60-day pause in controversial experiments
on the H5N1 bird flu virus. But none of them resumed work as
planned because all year long, the debate over the benefits and
the risks just wasn't going away. Virologist Ron Fouchier of
Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands says he reluctantly
went along with the moratorium, "but I've not been a great
advocate of it because there is urgency in this type of
research." Fouchier gets funding from the National Institutes of
Health to study H5N1, which is widespread in poultry in parts of
Asia and the Middle East. H