man-made swine-bird flu, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?

[Gadi Evron <ge () linuxbox org>]

http://shanghaiist.com/2009/11/19/man-made_swine_flu_supervirus_whats.php

Man-made swine-bird flu supervirus: What's French for "apocalypse"?

  Since up until now, we've only seen the  third case of serious swine 
flu emerged in Shanghai, you may well be wondering, “how bad could all 
this hullabaloo get anyway?"

Pretty bad. Do you remember Avian Flu? The one that had a high mortality 
rate but was difficult to contract? What would you say about the 
creation of a supervirus that was as contagious as the swine flu and as 
deadly as the avian flu?

It may not be as far-fetched a scenario as you'd think, as French 
scientists at the Jean Mérieux/INSERM facility in Lyon are splicing 
genetic material from both viruses to see if the two could possibly 
recombine, and whether the resulting virus would be deadlier than either.

There's a reason for the madness: this scenario tries to anticipate 
pandemics, attempting to see what potential paths they might take. And 
at least according to the facility, chances of the virus leaving the lab 
and entering the world ala Outbreak are very, very low - they're 
categorized as Level-4 Biohazards, the same level as that freaky-scary 
Ebola virus - so they're being handled as such.

We've got Dustin Hoffman on speed dial, though, just in case.
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