Last summer, scientists performed an experiment that could have been ripped from the script of a Hollywood thriller. Sealed off in high-tech laboratories in the Netherlands and Wisconsin, researchers transformed one of the world’s most deadly viruses, transmissible by direct contact, into versions capable of spreading through the air.
Two lab-made versions of the lethal H5N1 virus prompt a biosecurity blowup, pitting the benefits of sharing scientific data against the hazards that might come if the information were to fall into the wrong hands.
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