Foreign Correspondent

Building the Perfect Bug

Bird flu is already aggressively lethal so why did laboratory researchers engineer a super strain that can be contracted far more easily, just like normal flu? It's a question that has provoked raging arguments within the scientific community and provoked an extraordinary reaction from security agencies worried about the prospect of bio-terrorism. At the moment there's a tense truce between the camps but inevitably the research projects will publish their work. Some experts also believe it's only a matter of time before the bug itself leaves the lab and goes to work on a very unprepared world.