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@VintageKidsNL

Mar 4

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (Reuters) - Dutch scientists hidden away in a top-security laboratory are seeking to create mutant flu viruses, dangerous work designed to prepare the world for a lethal pandemic by beating nature to it. reuters.com/article/us-bir…

Doctors and nurses attend a training course for the treatment of the H7N9 virus at a hospital, where a H7N9 patient is being treated, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, in this April 5, 2013 file photo. REUTERS/Chance Chan/Files

The idea of engineering viral pathogens to be more deadly than they are already has generated huge controversy, amid fears that such viruses could leak out or fall into the wrong hands.

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VintageKidsGoodies

@VintageKidsNL

Mar 4

aim to genetically modify the virus to see what it needs to give it more of a deadly pandemic kick. That could make it more virulent more pathogenic and more transmissible capable of passing easily in droplets through the air from one mammal to another. reuters.com/article/us-bir…

The highest level, BSL4, requires military guard and applies to pathogens for which there are no preventives or treatments.

The Erasmus team has one of Europe’s most secure laboratories - a so-called Enhanced BSL3, or Bio-Safety Level 3, lab - the highest level of biosecurity for academic research and a facility in which agents can be studied that cause “serious or lethal disease”

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@VintageKidsNL

Mar 2

Scientists to make mutant forms of new bird flu to assess risk reut.rs/15Md94V LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists are to create mutant forms of the H7N9 bird flu virus that has emerged in China so they can gauge the risk of it becoming a lethal human pandemic. 2013 👇

The genetic modification work will to result in highly transmissible and deadly forms of H7N9 being made in several high security laboratories around the world, but it is vital to prepare for the threat, the scientists say.

The new bird flu virus, which was unknown in humans until February, has already infected at least 133 people in China and Taiwan, killing 43 of them, according to the latest World Health Organization (WHO) data.

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@VintageKidsNL

Mar 2

Proponents of Kawaoka+Fouchier experiments: these answered the question of how a virus like H5N1 could possibly become airborne in humans allowed other researchers to develop vaccines and therapeutics which specifically targeted these amino acid changes, profilbaru.com/article/Gain-o…

and also demonstrated that there was a linkage between transmissibility in avian viruses and lethality: while the virus had become more transmissible, it had also become significantly less deadly.

Various critics of the research (including members of Congress) responded to the publications with alarm. Others called the experiments an "engineered doomsday."[

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@VintageKidsNL

Mar 2

Antibody landscapes after influenza virus infection or vaccination by Ron Foucier ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

Much of the global burden of infectious disease today is caused by antigenically variable pathogens, which escape immunity induced by prior infection or vaccination by changing the molecular structure recognized by #antibodies

Human influenza viruses are notorious for their capacity to evolve and evade the adaptive immune response.

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@VintageKidsNL

Mar 2

I was intrigued,” says Ron Fouchier, in his rich, Dutch-accented English, “in how little things could kill large animals and humans

Gain-of-Function Mutation Experiments Explained freethink.com/health/gain-of…

This fascination led the silver-haired virologist to venture into controversial gain-of-function mutation research — work by scientists that adds abilities to pathogens, including experiments that focus on SARS and MERS, the coronavirus cousins of the COVID-19 agent.

The mutations that gave the virus its ability to be airborne transmissible are gain-of-function (GOF) mutations. GOF research is when scientists purposefully cause mutations that give viruses new abilities in an attempt to better understand the pathogen. In Fouchier’s experiments

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