The New York Times, July 31, 2012
Four times in the past century, a new strain of flu has emerged that can spread quickly in humans. One of those strains, which emerged in 1918, killed an estimated 50 million people.
All human flu strains evolved from flu viruses that live in birds. To understand how these transitions happen, scientists have recently been tinkering with a strain of bird flu to see how many mutations it takes until its spreads from mammal to mammal.
When news of their efforts emerged last fall, a fierce debate broke out about the wisdom of publishing the experiments in full.
Continue reading “Flu That Leapt From Birds to Seals Is Studied for Human Threat”
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