“Someone doesn’t have to weaponize the bird flu—the birds are already doing that.”

“Someone doesn’t have to weaponize the bird flu—the birds are already doing that.” This is one of the best lines in the movie Contagion. [1]   Despite this truth revealed in fiction, a group of  virologists managed to create a deadly airborne version of  H5N1 (Bird Flu) with just five mutations of two genes.  Skeptics pointed out that the flu has failed to mutate this way naturally so far and was unlikely to do so. [2]  However these researchers had figured out a recipe to weaponize H5N1.   "In an unprecedented move, a government biosafety advisory panel has asked the Dutch and U.S. teams, as well as editors at two prestigious journals where their work has been accepted for publication, to omit crucial details about the research 'that could enable replication of the experiments by those who would seek to do harm.'" [3] [4]