The End of October

by Lawrence Wright

Ron Fouchier, at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, modified the Indonesian virus in the laboratory, awarding it new functions, including the abilities to be airborne and transmissible among mammals. Yoshihiro Kawaoka, at the University of Wisconsin, did something similar with a Vietnamese strain of the same virus. The two men did this to create a template for a vaccine in case of a future pandemic, but as they were about to publish their findings, including their methodology, The New York Times scolded the scientists for undertaking such a “doomsday” experiment. Such a virus “could kill tens or hundreds of millions of people if it escaped confinement or was stolen by terrorists.”