In a controversial experiment, a team of scientists has recreated a deadly airborne virus resembling the 1918 Spanish flu, which killed an estimated 50 million people and infected one third of the world's population at that time. The Spanish flu, which is only 3 percent different from the recreated pathogen, has yet to be understood by global health experts and is known as "the mother of all pandemics."
The team, headed by University of Wisconsin at Madison researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka, used reverse genetics to rebuild the virus from fragments of strains of wild bird flu. According to Kawaoka's study, this new virus "may have pandemic potential."
Article continues belowThe Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
"The work they are doing is absolutely crazy," Lord May, the United Kingdom's former chief science advisor, told The Guardian. "The whole thing is exceedingly dangerous. Yes, there is a danger, but it's not arising from the viruses out there in the animals, it's arising from the labs of grossly ambitious people."