Controversial ongoing experiments on mutant viruses could put human lives in danger by unleashing an accidental pandemic. [s]The Guardian[/s] reports that epidemiologists at [b]Harvard School of Public Health[/b] and [b]Yale[/b] argue that the benefits of the work are outweighed by the risk of pathogenic strains escaping from laboratories and spreading around the world.
The report may reignite a crisis in science that erupted in 2012 when a US biosecurity panel ruled that two studies on mutant bird flu were too dangerous to publish.
[link url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/20/virus-experiments-risk-global-pandemic]Full report in The Guardian[/link]
[link url=http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001646]PLOS Medicine article summary[/link]