# 6205
Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist (1996 for her series on Ebola) and author of 3 books (including The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance), takes on a subject which has perplexed many of us in Flublogia over the past week:
The `kinder and gentler’ version of Ron Fouchier’s ferret experiments presented at last week’s ASM BioDefense panel discussion (see ASM BioDefense Meeting Video Now Online).
At the time I noted:
In a bit of a surprise, Erasmus University researcher Ron Fouchier characterized the results of his experiments somewhat differently than we’ve seen in the past.
While the mutated virus could be spread via the aerosol route between ferrets, Fouchier reassured, "Our data suggests this virus spreads very poorly."
Fouchier also downplayed the pathogenicity of virus, stating that ferrets infected this way only suffered mild illness (it required direct deep-lung inoculation to produce death/severe illness).
“It is not highly lethal if ferrets start coughing and sneezing to one another”, he said.
With the research currently restricted to a small group of scientists and policy makers, it makes it very difficult for anyone on the outside to make sense of all of this.
But Laurie Garrett isn’t just anyone.
Today she takes a hard look at this reversal, and other attempts to characterize the H5N1 virus as `far less pathogenic than feared’, in her blog.
At this point I’ll wisely step aside and invite you to read:
