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The U.S. is funding dangerous experiments it doesn’t want you to know about

Inglesby, Tom; Lipsitch, Marc
http://outline.com/g9B73h

Publisher:  Washington Post
Date Written:  27/02/2019
Year Published:  2019  
Resource Type:  Article

The US government is funding research into making bird flu virus highly contagious without publicly disclosing it. A number of scientists are opposed to the secrecy behind these experiments and even question their value.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

In the past year, the U.S. government quietly greenlighted funding for two groups of researchers, one in the United States and the other in the Netherlands, to conduct transmission-enhancing experiments on the bird flu virus as they were originally proposed before the moratorium. Amazingly, despite the potential public-health consequences of such work, neither the approval nor the deliberations or judgments that supported it were announced publicly. The government confirmed them only when a reporter learned about them through non-official channels....

As researchers, we understand the usual logic for keeping scientific grant reviews confidential. But this is not ordinary science. The overwhelming majority of scientific studies are safe; even the worst imaginable accident, such as an infection of a lab worker or an explosion, is unlikely and would harm only a handful of people. But creating potentially pandemic pathogens creates a risk - albeit a small one - of infecting millions of people with a highly dangerous virus. For this kind of research, there is no justification for keeping risk-benefit deliberations secret.

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