Resurrection of Extinct Pathogens: A Smart Move?

Current concerns about avian flu hark back to the terrifying and lethal influenza pandemic of 1918 which killed an estimated 50 million persons. Beginning in 1995, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began an effort to reconstruct the 1918 Spanish flu virus. They reassembled the genetic code by piecing together fragments of Spanish flu genes taken from victims of the pandemic, one frozen for 80 years in permafrost. Using the techniques of reverse genetics, the researchers succeeded in recreating a living copy of the virus which infected and killed laboratory mice. Yoshihiro Kawaoka then made his own copy of the virus at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Canada, and injected it into macaque monkeys; their lungs became congested with fluid and blood, a condition reported by the victims of Spanish flu. Are such efforts to resurrect extinct viruses wise? We know that an artificially produced pandemic could be as lethal as a naturally produced one. And we do not need to imagine the virus getting into the hands of terrorists: a simple laboratory accident would have the same effect. As recent laboratory accidents, including those identified by the Sunshine Project, attest, the possibility of human errors and equipment failures mean that no experiment is absolutely safe. Perhaps it is time for public health professionals to question the ethics of such dangerous experiments. By resurrecting such extinct pathogens, we may yet expose ourselves to the very dangers that we most fear.