Was it ‘crazy’ for this scientist to re-create a bird flu virus that killed 50 million people?
By Terrence McCoy
WashingtonPost.com
June 12, 2014
A famous picture from the 1918 flu pandemic shows so many rows of bedridden soldiers that it looks like an optical illusion — the double-mirror effect. It’s a jarring image to accompany jarring events that began in January 1918 and quickly subsumed the planet.
Little about the Spanish flu, which would ultimately infect one-third of all souls on Earth and kill a staggering 50 million, makes sense. Most influenza outbreaks pick off the weakest among us: the young, elderly, and infirm. But this one, called the “greatest medical holocaust in history,” targeted and killed healthy adults. Even today, “its origin remains puzzling,” said a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study that called it “the mother of all pandemics.”
“Seventy-five years of research has failed to answer the most basic question about the 1918 pandemic: why was it so fatal,” the study said.
The unknowns of this flu virus and others have divided the scientific community. Some researchers think fatal strains should be re-created for analysis. Others think such an endeavor couldn’t be more dangerous. What if something goes wrong? What if an experiment accidentally unleashes a modern pandemic?
The defenders of such research parry: What if an epidemic happens naturally and we find ourselves unprepared?
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