No one knows the probability that H5N1 would reassort with a human flu. All researchers know is that a hybrid between H5N1 and a human flu has not been discovered — yet.
“We really don’t talk about it, because so little is known about the probability of it,” said Dr. Smith.
This ignorance is nothing new when it comes to flu. In a commentary in Science, Dr. Lipsitch and his colleagues point out just how often flu evolution delivers us unpleasant surprises. Resistance to antiviral drugs like Tamiflu, for example, arose without warning.
Dr. Lipsitch doesn’t take much comfort from the fact that the engineered viruses are relatively mild in ferrets. The scientists can’t explain why their viruses are mild, and if they escape they might evolve further, becoming both easily spread and quite deadly.
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