A vaccine expert from Canberra's National Centre for Biosecurity (NCB) wants the formula used by virologists to mutate the bird flu virus into a strain capable of killing humans to be omitted in the published version of their experiment for security reason.

The censorship would prevent others from genetically engineering the virus for use as a biological weapon, according to Professor Ian Ramshaw.

"As a researcher you do the good thing but in the wrong hands it could be used for evil. In this case I'm not so worried about bio-terrorism. It's the disgruntled researcher who is dangerous - the rogue scientist," Ramshaw warned, according to Canberra Times.

Ramshaw said he will make the recommendation to a conference organized by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funded the work of virologist Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands in recreating the H5N1 strain in the laboratory to prove that the virus can cause a pandemic.

Virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and the University of Tokyo also conducted the same experiment with the same results.

Ramshaw is to travel to Washington, where the NIH conference is scheduled Wednesday, to argue his recommendation.

Fouchier and Kawaoka's studies are being reviewed by the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity before it is published, though the Dutch scientist admitted he had revealed details of his work to the scientific journals New Scientist and Scientific American. The NIH also agrees to the publication of his work.

Fouchier created the mutant H5N1 by infecting ferrets several times until the pathogen became airborne after 10 generations of the mammal closely resembling polecats. The animal was used in the experiment because it best mimics the transmission of influenza among humans.

There were pros and cons to the H5N1 experiment.

Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which has a strong interest in biosecurity issues, believe the experiment should never have been done, according to Science Mag. However, biodefense and flu expert Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, said the experiments were important to warn the public and to develop control measures or vaccines.

The bird flu epidemic in 2009 killed 500 people worldwide though it was not easily passed from human to human and some who were infected recovered.

Prof. Ian Ramshaw of the National Centre for Biosecurity.