1918 Killer Flu Virus To Be Tested In UW Lab

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1918 Killer Flu Virus To Be Tested In UW Lab University of Washington scientists plan to infect monkeys with a killer flu virus grown from tissue exhumed from victims of the 1918 epidemic.

They hope the insight they gain will unravel the mystery of why tens of millions of people worldwide died from the virulent flu strain and lead to development of better vaccines and drugs that may save lives in the future.

"This was the most deadly infectious disease in the history of mankind, killing at least 40 million people," said Dr. Michael Katze, a UW microbiologist and principal investigator for the local arm of the project.

"To this day, nobody understands why the virus was so deadly." ...
A skeptic of resurrecting and enlivening the 1918 flu virus, however, said it is critical to first make sure we are adequately protected against creating a "man-made" pandemic.

"This project could create a new bug that infects someone in the lab who then walks out at the end of the day and, literally, kills tens of millions of people," said Ed Hammond, director of a biotechnology and bio-weapons
watchdog organization called the Sunshine Project at http://www.sunshine-project.org based in Austin, Texas.

Although Hammond said he could accept the noble intentions of the UW scientists, he noted that there are no national laboratory standards for dealing with this particular virus.

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