FedEx to deliver flu virus?

Third in a series.

Along with the holiday packages and overnight shipments, your local FedEx truck may be also carrying the most deadly flu virus the world has seen in 100 years.

That flu virus first appeared in 1918-1919 and spread around the world as an influenza pandemic in the midst of World War I. No one really knows how many died, but estimates range from 20 million to 100 million people, with about a half million in the United States alone.

It was labeled the “Spanish Flu” because it was first observed in Spain. But historians now believe the outbreak started in a U.S. army barracks and then spread quickly among troops stationed overseas. Before the pandemic ended, the virus had reached even the most remote villages.

A little more than a year after the epidemic began, the virus disappeared. Many other types of influenza viruses have come and gone since. There have been two other worldwide pandemics, in 1957 and 1968. But the Spanish Flu virus, the most deadly of all, was never seen alive again—until this year.

Several years ago researchers with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases retrieved samples of the dead virus from the remains of an Inuit woman in Alaska. Tissue with the virus fragments had been preserved by the permafrost in which she had been buried.

Other virus fragments had earlier been recovered from tissue samples of U.S. soldiers who had died in the flu pandemic. Those samples had been preserved by the Army. Over time the research team deciphered the complete genetic code, the genome, which they recently published in the scientific journal Nature and which can be found on the Internet.

Soon after, another group of researchers with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that they had used the genetic code to reconstruct a living copy of the virus. Tests confirmed the reconstituted virus is able to kill laboratory animals.

Supporters of this research work claim that the genetic code and even the live virus will help scientists understand how a flu virus can be so deadly, and perhaps yield clues on measures to protect people from a similar virus if one comes again.

Critics say the risk that the virus might escape by accident is too great. In the last few years a number of accidents have occurred—even in high-security laboratories—in which lab workers became infected with the diseases being studied, or in which infected animals have escaped or have been lost.

There is also the possibility that someone with access to the virus might purposely set it loose. It is believed that the anthrax spores found in the mail in 2001 were released by an unknown scientist who worked in a U.S. military lab.

The scientific benefit of having the actual live virus is also in doubt since any new virus that appears is likely to be different in at least some respects.

The Spanish Flu virus has some similarities to the H5N1 avian (bird) flu virus that has been the cause of worldwide concern. But there are sufficient differences that no one can predict whether vaccines or medications designed for either of these will be effective against whatever virus does mutate into a form that can be transmitted from human to human, if in fact such a mutation ever happens at all.

The Bush administration intends to pursue this research. The White House has announced that the CDC will make the live Spanish Flu virus available to purportedly secure laboratories.

And how will they get the virus from one “secure” lab to another?

Think FedEx

According to virologist Clarence Peters at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, as reported by the journal Nature, it is customary to send Ebola and similar agents by commercial carriers that allow packages to be tracked. These include FedEx, UPS, DHL and Airborne Express.

The virus is frozen and shipped in a plastic vial that is wrapped with absorbent material to catch leaks, and then sealed in an outer plastic container that is kept in a polystyrene box along with dry ice and then in a heavy cardboard box. It is “very, very safe” according to Dr. Peters.

How safe is safe? What if the package is lost or delivered to the wrong address? What if it is stolen? What if mistakes are made during the “safe” wrapping process?

On Oct. 21, WESH Channel 2 News in Palm Bay, Fla., reported that leaking anthrax vials had been delivered to the Midwest Research Institute. According to the police, three of the 10 package layers had broken in transit, but the remaining layers kept the anthrax contained.

The Spanish Flu virus poses much more danger than anthrax. Anthrax can only harm those who come in contact with it. But if someone is infected with flu virus, he or she can pass it to others and it could spread rapidly before anyone knew it had happened. The Spanish Flu virus killed millions in 1918. Will this killer get loose to kill again?

Had a copy of Nature magazine with the Spanish Flu genome published inside been found in Baghdad, the Bush administration might have used that as “evidence” that Iraq was contemplating the use of the virus as a weapon of mass destruction. Nothing of the sort was found in Iraq.

Perhaps the now-unemployed weapons inspectors should start searching FedEx trucks leaving CDC headquarters.

Next: What can be done?