From Carl Zimmer, writing on NYTimes.com, an excerpt from Amateurs Are New Fear in Creating Mutant Virus:

Just how easy is it to make a deadly virus?

This disturbing question has been on the minds of many scientists recently, thanks to a pair of controversial experiments in which the H5N1 bird flu virus was transformed into mutant forms that spread among mammals. After months of intense worldwide debate, a panel of scientists brought together by the World Health Organization recommended last week in favor of publishing the results. There is no word on exactly when those papers — withheld since last fall by the journals Nature and Science — will appear. But when they do, will it be possible for others to recreate the mutant virus? And if so, who might they be and how would they do it?

Not quite the DIY spirit we generally try to encourage. And we don’t have a ready policy answer. Comments solicited. Further  resources:

NIH: Avian influenza (H5N1)

Scientists Debate How to Handle Mutant H5N1 Virus

FluWiki is what it sounds like – a wiki devoted to influenza. There’s some useful information here – and I suspect that when things heat up on this issue, the wiki gears up as well. Which is as it should be.