Dutch lab creates highly contagious killer flu!

AMSTERDAM, Holland - December 20, 2011 - A deadly strain of bird flu with the potential to infect and kill millions of people has been created in a laboratory by European scientists - who now want to publish full details of how they did it.

The discovery has prompted fears within the U.S. government that the knowledge will fall into the hands of terrorists wanting to use it as a bio-weapon of mass destruction. Some scientists are questioning whether the research should ever have been undertaken in a university laboratory, instead of at a military facility.

The U.S. government is now taking advice on whether the information is too dangerous to be published.

"The fear is that if you create something this deadly and it goes into a global pandemic, the mortality and cost to the world could be massive," a senior scientific adviser to the U.S. government told The Independent, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The worst-case scenario here is worse than anything you can imagine."

For the first time the researchers have been able to mutate the H5N1 strain of avian influenza so that it can be transmitted easily through the air in coughs and sneezes. Until now, it was thought that H5N1 bird flu could only be transmitted between humans via very close physical contact.

Dutch scientists carried out the controversial research to discover how easy it was to genetically mutate H5N1 into a highly infectious "airborne" strain of human flu. They believe that the knowledge gained will be vital for the development of new vaccines and drugs.

But critics say the scientists have endangered the world by creating a highly dangerous form of flu which could escape from the laboratory - as well as opening a Pandora's box for fanatical terrorists wishing to make a bio-weapon.