Only a week or so ago I was lamenting that few Americans were
aware of the threat of avian flu. Now suddenly, the story is
everywhere. No need to rehash here the potential catastrophe
that has in recent days been splashed all over the media. But
here is another story, and an important one: Biologists have
recreated the virus responsible for the 1918 flu pandemic that
killed as many as 50 million people worldwide. Fragments of
viral RNA were retrieved from a flu victim buried in Alaskan
permafrost in 1918. The RNA was converted into DNA and
sequenced. Overlapping sequences were pieced together to get the
entire genome, and the viral DNA was synthesized in the lab. The
synthesized DNA was injected into human kidney cells, which
produced tens of viruses. These were isolated and used to infect
mice. The mice all died within days of a virus that was indeed
many times more virulent than the pathogens responsible for the
pandemics of 1957 and 1968. A century old flu virus has been
recreated. Good or bad? Some say go