{"id":2630,"date":"2011-11-28T23:20:30","date_gmt":"2011-11-29T06:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/?p=2630"},"modified":"2017-04-25T04:49:56","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T11:49:56","slug":"wiping-out-civilization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/wiping-out-civilization","title":{"rendered":"Wiping out Civilization"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p>A group of scientists is pushing to publish research about how they created a man-made flu virus that could potentially wipe out civilization.<\/p>\n<p>The deadly virus is a genetically tweaked version of the H5N1 bird flu strain, but is far more infectious and could pass easily between millions of people at a time.<\/p>\n<p>The research has caused a storm of controversy and divided scientists, with some saying it should never have been carried out.<\/p>\n<p>The current strain of H5N1 has only killed 500 people and is not contagious enough to cause a global pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>But there are fears the modified virus is so dangerous it could be used for bio-warfare, if it falls into the wrong hands.<\/p>\n<p>Virologist Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands lead a team of scientists who discovered that a mere five mutations to the avian virus was sufficient to make it spread far more easily.<\/p>\n<p>Read more: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/sciencetech\/article-2066624\/Anthrax-isnt-scary-compared-Man-flu-virus-potential-wipe-millions-created-warns-frightened-scientist.html#ixzz1f4YLcKcp\">http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/sciencetech\/article-2066624\/Anthr\u2026z1f4YLcKcp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A group of scientists is pushing to publish research about how they created a man-made flu virus that could potentially wipe out civilization. The deadly virus is a genetically tweaked version of the H5N1 bird flu strain, but is far more infectious and could pass easily between millions of people at a time. The research [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-existential-risks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2630"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47473,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2630\/revisions\/47473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}