Here & Now

UW Set to Resume Controversial Flu Research

Frederica Freyberg:
UW-Madison’s renowned professor and virologist whose life work involves avian flu just got the green light to proceed with his controversial research. That research had been shut down five years ago over concerns an accident at his lab could cause a deadly human pandemic. In tonight’s WisContext, reporter Will Cushman talks with us about what this is all about. Thanks for being here.

Will Cushman:
Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:
So I read your article and you really stepped into a hornet’s nest with this one.

Will Cushman:
Yeah. I think that’s safe to say.

Frederica Freyberg:
What is the status, though, of Yoshihiro Kawaoka’s research on campus right now?

Will Cushman:
So Science Magazine broke the story that the research was greenlighted again and allowed to resume back in the beginning of February. At that time, the reporter said that she had heard that Dr. Kawaoka would be beginning the research again in a few weeks. I haven’t been able to confirm whether or not it has resumed, but I think it’s safe to say that if it hasn’t yet, it will soon.

Frederica Freyberg:
What is the aim of his research?

Will Cushman:
Sure, so his aim is essentially to understand how a wild sub type of influenza, in this case the H5N1 bird flu, which is not currently contagious between humans, but is quite dangerous to humans when they do catch it from birds, about 60% of humans do die when they get it, but how a wild virus like that could become contagious in humans, among humans. He did that in 2011 by altering the H5N1 sub type and he determined that four genetic mutations allowed the bird flu to become contagious among ferrets.

Frederica Freyberg:
So this is kind of the crux of the controversy and other scientists are saying this is super risky. What are they saying?

Will Cushman:
Right. I spoke to a pretty prominent critic of Dr. Kawaoka’s work, Dr. Marc Lipsitch. He’s at Harvard. He’s an infectious disease researcher. He and some of his colleagues worry that by altering a sub type of flu that is not currently contagious but dangerous to humans to potentially be contagious among mammals, in this case, ferrets, which are a common stand-in for humans transmission in labs, that a lab accident at Dr. Kawaoka’s lab could precipitate a potential health emergency with global ramifications because there is no immunity in the population to the sub type.

Frederica Freyberg:
But meanwhile, it’s been five years since there was a moratorium on the funding for this kind of research. Presumably, all of these kinds of risks have been vetted.

Will Cushman:
Right. So this moratorium was put in place by the federal government in 2014 after a series of pretty high profile lab accidents at federal labs throughout the country, I should say unrelated to Dr. Kawaoka’s lab, highlighted the risk of working with some of the world’s deadliest pathogens including influenza strains. So the moratorium was put in place and during that the federal government hosted several symposiums. And National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine hosted two symposiums where the risks and benefits were debated in public among scientists. A 1,000-page report, risk/benefit analysis was produced through all this work as well as an ethical analysis of the work. In the end, the federal government did decide that the potential benefits to global public health outweighed the potential risk of this research.

Frederica Freyberg:
In terms of the risks of a lab accident, what kind of biosafety protocols does a UW-Madison scientist’s lab have to maintain?

Will Cushman:
Right, I spoke to a UW-Madison official who is in charge of biosecurity at UW-Madison. She spoke on behalf of Dr. Kawaoka’s lab. She described a really, really stringent biosecurity protocol at the lab. She described kind of like an onion, layers and layers of safety procedures that kind of help mitigate the risk. Everything from the lab workers are vetted by the FBI. They have to be decontaminated. Anything that enters the lab has to be decontaminated. Lab workers have to wear intense Tyvek suits, special booties, multiple gloves. They have to use an air-purifying respirator. Local fire departments have been instructed that if there’s a fire at the lab to just let it burn. If a lab worker has a medical emergency while in the lab, they have to first be decontaminated by another qualified lab staff before they can receive medical attention.

Frederica Freyberg:
Wow, that is fascinating. Very briefly, how big of a deal is his research deemed to be globally?

Will Cushman:
I think quite a big deal. As far as I know, there’s one another group that’s doing similar research. So depending on what comes of this research, it has the potential to really affect public health on a global scale.

Frederica Freyberg:
All right. Thanks very much.

Will Cushman:
Thank you.