Lab-created bird flu virus accident shows lax oversight of risky 'gain of function' research

Inside the high-security Influenza Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, two experienced scientists were pulling ferrets out of their HEPA-filtered cages on a Monday in December 2019. Another researcher, still in training, was also in the room to watch and learn.

One by one, the animals were put into a biosafety cabinet, where a solution was washed into their nostrils. It’s a procedure used to collect evidence of infection, and this particular experiment involved exposing the animals to a highly controversial lab-engineered strain of H5N1 avian influenza virus.

The virus they were working with that day was far from ordinary, and there should have been no room for the safety breach that was about to happen and the oversight failures that followed.