LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Ron Fouchier and Ab Osterhaus of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam have accepted recommendations by the U.S. government's National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. Fouchier and Osterhaus say that key details of their U.S.-funded research should not be published as bioterrorists may use the information to cause a bird-flu pandemic.

"But we do question whether it is appropriate to have one country dominate a discussion that has an impact on scientists and public-health officials worldwide," Fouchier and Osterhaus wrote in the journal Nature.

"It is not clear whether an international discussion would lead to different recommendations ... We don't know the worldwide opinion until a group of experts from all parts of the globe is formed. An issue this big should not be decided by one country, but all of us," they say.

Fouchier and colleagues created a strain of H5N1 bird-flu virus that can be spread by airborne transmission between laboratory ferrets, the standard animal "model" for human influenza. They did it to see how easy it would be for the virus to mutate into a form that could cause a pandemic.

Such information gleaned from the research could prove essential for scientists engaged in the early-warning surveillance of new strains of flu virus, in addition to researchers involved in creating new vaccines and anti-viral drugs.

However -- the details could be misused by rogue states or by bio-warfare terrorists with access to rudimentary scientific knowledge and standard laboratory equipment. Previously, it was thought the H5N1 bird-flu virus, which appeared in birds in 1996, could only be transmitted to people by close contact with infected poultry, rather than by airborne transmission from one person to another.

If the H5N1 bird-flu strain mutated into an airborne form, the results could be one of the deadliest pandemics in history, where more than half of those infected die.

The majority of the 600 or so deaths from H5N1 have resulted from close contact between people and poultry, almost exclusively in Asia and the Middle East where keeping domestic poultry is common.

Fouchier and Osterhaus were among experts asked by Nature to give opinions on recommendations of the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, which wants key details of their study, such as the precise genetic sequence of the mutated virus, to be withheld from publication.

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