Avian influenza. Surprising twist in debate over lab-made H5N1.

For the past several months, the media, the public, scientific groups, and a key U.S. government advisory panel on biosecurity have wrestled with how to deal with two unpublished studies they thought described the creation of a bird flu virus capable of triggering an influenza pandemic with the potential to kill millions of people. The New York Times even billed it as a doomsday virus. But now, a researcher who created one of the H5N1 mutants and a leading U.S. health official say the threat has been blown out of proportion, offering what they said were clarifications and new data to better gauge the risk it presents. Contrary to widespread reports, the researcher, Ron Fouchier of Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, revealed that the virus made in his lab does not kill ferrets infected by the aerosol route. And it is more difficult to transmit the virus than Fouchier previously described.