A Re-Engineered Chicken Enters the War Against Bird Flu - TIME
Avian influenza A H5N1 viruses, seen in brown
Collection Mix: Subjects RM / Getty Images
Got a fever, headache, sore throats and all the other lovely symptoms of influenza? You can blame it on the birds. The main reservoir for influenza viruses is wild birds, which can pass those microbes to domestic poultry, which can come into contact, and potentially infect, human beings. That is what's happened with the deadly H5N1 avian flu virus, which has killed at least 306 people over the past 7 years, not to mention hundreds of millions of chickens and other birds. International heath authorities have increasingly focused on that viral intersection between birds and humans, reasoning that if H5N1 can be controlled in poultry, it won't be able to threaten people. That's a tall order though, by one count there are as many as 70 billion chickens around the world, many of them in backyard shacks in the developing world, and the shifty flu virus often evades vaccination. (See what you need to know about the H1N1 vaccine.)
But what if there were a way to breed poultry that were genetically resistant to H5N1 or any avian influenza virus, thus severing a major link in the flu's evolutionary chain? That's what a team of scientists in Britain tried to do recently, and they[...]
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