© Live ScienceControversial new research found a way to make bird flu spread easily among mammals.
News of two separate research projects that altered the bird-flu virus so it could potentially spread between humans has some experts asking: Should this research have been done at all?
Other scientists, however, are defending the projects as important progress in understanding how the virus, called H5N1, could adapt to cause a devastating pandemic.
"I wouldn't do it," said W. Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. "I think it is one thing to study the pathology of an organism to try to understand ways in which you can reduce the risk to humankind or animals by doing basic research. ... This isn't the case [here]; this virus doesn't transmit readily to humans."
Others argue that the two projects addressed questions crucial to averting a global tragedy: Could H5N1 mutate into a form that could spread between humans? And, if so, how?
"The bottom line is science has been advanced by this, we know something about the virus that we didn't know before," Thomas Daniels, an associate research scientist and co-director of the Vector Ecology Laboratory at Fordham University, told LiveScience. "It could be it's going to be very, very useful down the road, but right now we have to proceed with caution."