WHO says avian flu virus has not mutated

The World Health Organization says that a sample of the H5N1 virus collected in an Indonesian village where a family of seven people died appears to have mutated, but agency officials are stressing that there are no signs that the virus has spread any farther. Skeptical experts at the agency's Geneva headquarters call the changes "minuscule." The official WHO report on the cluster argues that the family members may have shared "a common genetic predisposition to infection with H5N1 virus with severe and fatal outcomes."

- check out this article from The Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)

PLUS: The news comes only a day after The New England Journal of Medicine published a letter by a group of Chinese scientists arguing that the country experienced its first H5N1 infection as early as 2003. That's led to more worries that the Chinese government may be withholding other important information about the virus. Article

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