Is Resurrecting a Killer Virus Ethical?
While official Washington was wading knee-deep into discussion about the Harriet Myers Supreme Court nomination and the Fitzgerald grand jury, the most potentially significant event of our lifetimes largely passed without notice, writes Charles Krauthammer, a syndicated political columnist and medical doctor. Scientists, seemingly acting from a Michael Crichton script, have created a living, killing copy of the 1918 Spanish flu — a discovery that raises major implications for a number of reasons, Krauthammer observes. For starters, this isnt just any ancient pathogen but the agent behind the most destructive pandemic in human history. Yes, as he readily concedes, the mapping of this flu strains genome may help us learn a great deal about the current avian flu virus. It may even help us determine if and when the virus will mutate into a human-to-human transmitted strain. And, yes, publishing this genome and making it available to the widest number of researchers in the world may great
