Category: Avian flu

In this week's edition of On Science Blogs, Tabitha M. Powledge pursues the notorious case of the dead ferrets, a mystery worthy of 221B Baker St. 

She begins with a nice roundup of blogs addressing the announced resumption this week of research on H5N1 bird-flu viruses engineered to be transmissible between mammals. Until now, humans appear to have contracted the virus only through contact with birds, especially poultry. But it can't be passed from one human to another. The new research was aimed at making the virus transmissible among ferrets, which respond to the virus the way humans do--or close to it, as I discussed in a post here earlier this week. The researchers doing the work agreed to a moratorium a year ago and unilaterally ended it this...