According to articles in the UK press, Yoshi Kawaoka, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has "deliberately created a pandemic strain of flu that can evade the human immune system". Some reports even allege the work recreates the deadly 1918 pandemic flu virus in a form that resists vaccines.
How worried should we be about the newly created viruses?
Not much at all – and certainly not about either of the claims above. But there might be cause for concern in the way this kind of research is being regulated.
Did Yoshi Kawaoka actually make a copy of the deadly 1918 pandemic virus that evades human immunity and vaccines?
No. The work looked at the potential evolution of a current strain of winter flu.
Kawaoka has told New Scientist that he was exposing the currently circulating winter flu virus descended from the 2009 swine flu to the immune reactions it induces in people and animals, to see what mutants emerge. "This kind of work has been done for more than 30 years, to help in the selection of vaccine strains," he says.
Why is such work necessary?
Flu is different from diseases like measles, which – if they don't kill you – leave you immune for life. You can catch flu again and again because it evolves so fast.
After a particular flu virus has dominated a few winter flu seasons, most people's immune systems recognise and kill it. At that point, a mutant of that virus will emerge that is slightly different to the original flu. This becomes the new dominant winter flu. This process is called "immune escape" and it is why winter flu is often mild: the virus isn't very different from the last flu we caught, so we have some immunity – just not quite enough to stop it completely.
Every now and then, though, a new flu breaks out to which most people have no immunity. This is a pandemic, and it is usually more deadly than ordinary flu. The last one was the swine flu pandemic of 2009.
After the initial outbreak a pandemic virus keeps circulating as winter flu, becoming less nasty as more people are exposed and get immunity to it – whereupon it starts producing escape mutants like ordinary flu does. The 2009 virus is now starting to do that.
This constant evolution means the flu vaccine has to be redesigned every year for whatever new mutant comes along. Because it takes six months to make, virologists and manufacturers must guess well in advance which viruses circulating this winter are likely to dominate next winter. Since the 1980s this process has been aided by experiments in which the current flu is exposed to antibodies and other immune molecules from people or experimental animals, to see what mutants evolve.
So this work has nothing to do with the 1918 pandemic flu that killed more than 50 million people worldwide?
Both the 1918 flu and the 2009 pandemic virus belong to the same family of flu, but they are very different – the 2009 virus isn't nearly as lethal as the 1918 flu. Itdominated this year's winter flu season in the northern hemisphere. There is little reason to think the lab-generated mutants will be more virulent.
Kawaoka has done recent work in which he compared viruses resembling it now circulating in birds to a reconstructed 1918 virus, to assess whether it could re-emerge. He concluded it might. That work was criticised for creating dangerous viruses that might not otherwise evolve; it was also done with stringent security measures to prevent viruses escaping.
So is there a problem?
Yes. The problem is not this particular research, but the secrecy that can surround such work. Kawaoka has sent his 2009 virus work to a leading journal, which prevents him from saying much about it before the work appears in print.
And the work was approved by US funding agencies under specific rules for this kind of research, but that process is not open to public scrutiny, even though experts differ on potential risks and benefits.
Both kinds of secrecy have led to misleading public reports. That could make it harder for researchers to do the really important work we need to defend ourselves from flu – which is evolving, whatever we do.
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