 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have with us Dr. Satyajit Rat of National Institute of Humanology to discuss what has become extremely controversial. Two months back, we had the controversy about publication of the modified H5N1 virus papers where it has been suggested that key sections on the virus modification be actually taken out of the text, be redacted and then only science and nature should publish them. The two researchers, Ron Fuchier and Kawaoka, have both suggested that these things are not as complex as they've been made out. There are really no dangers to these papers and they should be published in full. After the National Science Advisory Board and Biosecurity suggested redaction of the papers, a number of scientists met under WHO ages and have suggested that releasing the key sections only to few researchers would involve processes which are not clear and therefore they should not be followed and actually the papers should be published in full. So we have two completely different positions taken both of very well known researchers in the field and now we have a position that we do not know which way the scientific community is going to go. Satyajit, could you explain to us what is the transformation that has been done for the H5N1 virus and why is it being considered so dangerous? In the first place, the Kawaoka experiments at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and the Fuchier experiments at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands deal in a certain sense with two different viruses. The Kawaoka virus puts together components of two completely different viruses. It puts together a component of the H5N1 virus, it's along with non-H5N1 viruses and it builds therefore a virus. This virus is the one that they've used. The Fuchier virus is a virus generated in the lab from the H5N1 virus. What is common between those two viruses is the fact that it carries the H5 marker which is a prominent characteristic of the H5N1 avian flu, bird flu virus and is transmissible in a mammalian model system. What do I mean by that? There is a general opinion in the virology community that ferrets as an animal model seem to be similar to humans as far as transmissibility of influenza virus group members are concerned. All that means is simply that viruses that are transmissible in among between humans by droplets by aerosol are also similarly transmissible in ferrets. They cause a disease in ferrets that looks similar to the disease in humans, the normal influenza symptoms and H5N1, the avian flu virus has so far not been transmissible by aerosol in humans. The 500 plus cases that have occurred worldwide since over the past eight years or so have all been as a matter of contact with poultry which presumes a far more intimate and strong exposure to the virus than simply droplet exposure would provide. For the first time the H5 containing influenza viruses in both these experiments have become ferret aerosol transmissible. Now why is the ferret aerosol transmissibility of the H5N1 being seen as so dangerous considering that this virus clues are there in any case all around us. What makes this specific virus so dangerous? The simple answer to that can be provided from the Fuchsia experiment. The Fuchsia experiment takes H5N1 which is the bird flu virus. It passages it from one ferret to another and from one ferret to another in a situation where none of these ferrets were aerosol transmitting the virus. But eventually after I think about 10 passages the resultant virus that had I think two or three modifications in its gene sequence was actually aerosol transmissible in the ferret and was virulent kill the ferrets. Now you can make the simple leap which almost everybody who worries about the security aspects of this work is making which is that prima facie we have a bird flu virus that has an extremely high fatality rate as high as 40% that is now aerosol transmissible and therefore can spread in human populations and can cause pandemics. Though it is supposed to be WHO claims more than 50% fatality rates. One of the arguments has been that this is only among recorded cases and where you have actually sequenced what has been the causative agent and so on. But it is actually far more prevalent than this is shown by the WHO records. Would that be possible to argue that this is actually seen to be far more virulent than it actually is? Well it is certainly possible but I would argue that the relative virulence of H5N1 is likely to be correct. And what I mean by relative virulence is that it is more virulent than many other influenza viruses because exactly the same uncertainty about the denominator will apply to all influenza viruses regardless of whether it is H5N1 or something else or something else. So, if the same degree of uncertainty applies to the denominator then the relative virulence meaning that the numerator of fatalities being relatively high still provides you with a trend in which it is a pretty virulent virus. Now whether pretty virulent means it kills 40% of infected cases or 20% of infected cases 10% then becomes a matter of detail. One of the important issues that has been raised is that this kind of transmissibility being added to the virus in fact is a part of what the FINK report which started the NSABB that these are the kind of experiments which are dangerous which needs to be regulated which needs to be monitored publication needs to be again monitored and so on. Now do you think that there is any really any significance significant benefits who would get out of making this virus is transmissible this kind of research do you see is it as something that is positive in terms of trying to prevent it and trying to understand it or do you think it is something that the scientists are doing out of there just out of their need to publish papers and do more research. So, you know this notion that scientists are doing something just out of their need to publish papers and do more research is a little odd because clearly there is a large community out there not five scientists very large community out there which is interested in having these papers published that is why papers get published papers I mean if I simply want if I simply wanted to publish a paper I will I would put it out into cyberspace and it would be available to everybody are scientists doing that no they are not they are desperate to get their papers into nature into science and to that end they are trying to persuade as large a community as possible of peers and others that this is worthwhile. So, this notion about just wanting to publish needs to be taken in context especially in the age of the internet where if all we want to do is put things out into the public domain the simplest thing is to blog it such it let us be clear if you have a publication of course it has to your prestige of course there is other but as a consequence of that need you need to persuade a fairly large and diverse community that this is important and second value. So, what would be the value of such so again the fuchsia virus in this particular context provides us with an interesting answer to that question and that is H5N1 the original H5N1 is not aerosol transmissible we have been arguing for a long time that aerosol transmissible pandemic influenza viruses require an intermediate passage through for example pigs in order to do assortment between different influenza virus strains so as to create a large alteration in viruses so as to create a pandemic capability virus. Now H5N1 in the fuchsia experiments has undergone these two or three gene changes really very specific changes and has become aerosol transmissible. What does that say about our understanding of how the host virus relationship on a population scale operates in real life messy nature. So, what you are saying is that this understanding is important to fighting the influenza possibilities of the pandemic at the very least it teaches us not to take certain things for granted and to be perhaps even more cautious than we would have been if this information was not there is that not value. Now the question comes up of what the WTU experts have said that if you accept there is a value to the research then what NSABB recommends that only selected people should get access to this material how this virus is made transmissible and not others then becomes extremely problematic because then who decides what is who are the people who are worthy of the recipients of this what should be the mechanism of releasing it to them is science and nature the journals concerned do they have the ability to do it these are the kind of questions the WHO committee has raised. So, what do you think is the method then if you think there is a danger and there is a value what do you think the scientific community should do in order that the value does not get overwritten by the need for fighting what is called bioterrorism or the threat of possible bioterrorism. So, consider what the argued risks of this kind of research are one straightforward issue is simply a matter of containment you have dangerous viruses you need to maintain them and under appropriate containment because if there is an accident and if there is release then all sorts of terrible things can happen this is a relatively simple matter to deal with and nobody disputes that so called BSL 3, BSL by safety level 3, by safety level 4 containment appropriately monitored is adequate to deal with this. So, the real problem that everybody is talking about is bioterrorism what exactly do we mean by bioterrorism? We are talking about poisoning wells using mustard gas we pretty much done all of this been there done that we have decided some of us that we are not going to do this any longer. If that is how it is then all the information that is available of the old bioterrorism weapons is out there in the public domain why on earth is somebody inimically minded waiting desperately for a paper to be published in nature to indulge themselves in bioterrorism using modern weapons when old weapons will work just fine. The issue here is not so much to do with the bioterrorist as much as to do with our fears. Now our fears are to do with the flavor of bioterrorist of the day and every few years if not every if not more frequently than that our targets of whom might be an appropriate bioterrorist changes the axis of evil have a peculiar way of shifting angles fairly rapidly under these circumstances which government is to be exempted from the label of potential bioterrorist and which government is not. How do we decide in a global community of scientists who has connections that will eventually lead to this information becoming available to terrorists and who does it? Essentially you are going with the WHO trend of argument which is that there is really no point in trying to create the so-called filters and if somebody can do this kind of transmissibility by reading a paper he probably can do it much more simply doing other things. Now coming back to the last point that you had raised about the security biosecurity levels Canada has already said that H5N1 should be done only in biosecurity containment level 4 while most of the others are still sticking to biosecurity level 3 accidental release issues. Now it is also true that if you do it in biosecurity level 4 many much fewer labs than have the ability to do such research the research is valuable doing it in biosecurity level 4 actually makes it more difficult to do the research. So do you think level 4 level 3 seems an esoteric question do you think there is an appropriate discussion that we can have? We get into a level of technical detail you see remember that biosecurity levels as they are defined level 1 level 2 level 3 level 4 although they sound as though they are unitary definitions are in fact component melanges they have multiple components so you so it is possible to have in between levels between biosecurity level 3 and biosecurity level 4 for example just as there are levels between BSL 2 and BSL 3 which of these components is absolutely essential the components that go into BSL 4 which of them is absolutely essential which of them is dispensable these become issues that at a certain stage we are talking about people sitting down in the particular structures that we are in the particular laboratory that we are dealing with the proximity of the laboratory to other structures how near how close how big is the building what are the containment facilities therefore that may be needed in one and not be needed in the other beyond a certain point these are local ad hoc decisions that need to be made certainly BSL 3 is needed certainly BSL 3 with some care would I think be needed am I willing to argue that absolute extremely high security BSL level 4 containment is biologically mandatory my guess is that that is not the case my guess is that anybody who argues for BSL 4 is arguing not only from the biological containment point of view but also from the security containment point of view because BSL 4 level establishments carry with them also the security paraphernalia not simply of biological containment but of human malifies also quite possibility to restrict the number of teams working on the research and that would be clearly to see as far as possible for it to work as a dissuader I think this has been something that we need to follow up continuously we are also seeing various attacks coming on synthetic biology so not only on the question of justice transmissibility of the virus we will discuss this as further as the issues develop thank you Satyajit hope to have you again with us thank you.