Washington: A US-based Japanese scientist, Yoshihiro Kawaoka, said he had succeeded in engineering a version of the swine flu virus that would be able to evade the human immune system.
The research on the 2009 H1N1 virus at a lab at the University of Wisconsin, Madison was reported by the Independent. The virus killed half-a-million people so that it can escape human antibodies, meaning that populations would be defenceless against it. Kawaoka confirmed that he had been able to make changes in a particular protein that would enable the 2009 H1N1 virus to escape immune protection.
“We were able to identify the key regions would enable 2009 H1N1 viruses to escape immunity,” he said in an email.
Kawaoka said the reason for the research was to find out how the flu virus might mutate in nature and help scientists devise better vaccines against it. Daily Mail reported that he had last month synthesized a bird flu virus — called ‘1918-like Avian’. Scientists criticised the University of Wisconsin, for allowing the controversial research.
Experts also pointed out that the lab did not have the highest level of biosafety level required this kind of research.
