Health Organizations Checking Top Virus Scientist's Claim that Swine Flu May Have Escaped From Lab

Washington's Blog

Adrian Gibbs isn't a wild-eyed youth. He was one of the researchers whose worked was instrumental in the creation of the flu drugs Tamiflu and Relenza, and he has written or co-authored more than 250 scientific publications on viruses during his 39-year career at the Australian National University in Canberra.

The fact that Gibbs is saying that the swine flu may have escaped from a lab is causing the CDC and other health organizations to investigate his claim. They aren't buying it at this point, but they are looking into it.

Such speculation is not entirely new.

National Public Radio noted that Professor John Oxford at St. Bart's and the Royal London Hospital says that the 1957 H1N1 pandemic probably started when it escaped from a lab:

"We reckon now, in retrospect, it was probably released accidentally from a laboratory, probably in northern China or just across the border in Russia, because everyone was experimenting with those viruses at the time in the lab." It was nothing malicious, Oxford believes, just some flu vaccine research that broke out of containment.

Similarly, Bloomberg notes:

Some scientists have speculated that the 1977 Russian flu, the most recent global outbreak, began when a virus escaped from a laboratory.

It is also interesting that 2 of the 3 other flu pandemics of the last century - the 1918 Spanish Flu and the 1976 swine flu scare - both started at military bases. Specifically, the 1918 flu started at Fort Riley, Kansas. The 1976 swine flu started - and never spread beyond -Fort Dix, New Jersey. It is unclear whether or not those bases conducted defensive biowarfare research.