Exactly one year ago, the investigative journalist and author, Alison Young, published
Though the accident purportedly did not result in a human infection, it nevertheless raises many questions about the prudence of manipulating the H5N1 virus in a lab in order to make it infectious and transmissible among mammals.
Alison Young’s report prompted me to start reading her book, Pandora’s Gamble: Lab Leaks, Pandemics, and a World at Risk, published on April 25, 2023. Young has a long history of researching and reporting on Bio-labs and their checkered past. Most lab manipulation of pathogens is purportedly done to develop vaccines against them in the event that their natural iterations should ever evolve to infect humans, but this rationale is highly questionable if not downright mendacious.
Indeed, on December 18, 2013, the Foundation for Vaccine Research wrote a letter to the European Commission, signed by 56 scientists (including Nobel Laureates) in which they sharply criticized the GoF experiments on H5N1 by virologist, Ron Fouchier.
The 56 scientists vehemently express their opinion that naturally-occurring H5N1 does NOT efficiently transmit to humans and therefore poses little risk to humans.
Far more dangerous, they claim, is the possibility of a lab-modified H5N1 virus escaping from a lab. The scientists refer to the resurgence of H1N1 influenza in 1977 after a 20-year hiatus, most likely after escaping from a lab in the former Soviet Union.