>>> back now with a story that got our attention today. scientists have created a flu virus on purpose in the lab that could potentially kill a lot of people. now a big fight is about to erupt over how much to reveal to the wider world about it. we get more tonight from our chief science correspondent robert bazell .
>> reporter: starting with the virus that causes bird flu , two scientists have created a highly contagious version in the laboratory that one calls probably one of the most dangerous viruses you can make. a government committee is deciding how much detail scientific journals should reveal. and the controversial decision is due soon. some top scientists think the entire project is wrong.
>> i think it's a bad idea for us to take a lethal virus and transform it into a trance misable one and a second bad idea to publish the results.
>> reporter: bird flu called h1n1 first jumped from chickens to humans in hong kong in 1998 and was deadly, killing about 60% of the people infected. the city stopped the outbreak by killing all chickens. since then periodic outbreaks have occurred but the virus has never been very contagious, only infecting a few people at a time. the two scientists, one in europe and the other at the university of wisconsin , genetically altereded wild bird flu so it could be easily transmitted from person to person. they used ferrets. they submitted to results to two top journals, "science" and "nature." scientists did this to see what would have to happen in nature to make a pandemic. others say it could be a cookbook for terrorists. a government panel will make the recommendations. it's not certain the journal wills follow them scary stuff.
Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/45690564/
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