The chicken soup of the future might just be made from transgenic birds that can't get bird flu—if regulators decide they're safe and consumers don't object. U.K. scientists have created transgenic chickens that can't pass on avian influenza, a disease that decimates poultry flocks and that flu scientists fear could spawn an influenza pandemic among humans. The study, published in this week's issue of Science (p. 223), "is extremely interesting as a proof of principle," says Timm Harder, a bird flu researcher at the Friedrich Loeffler Institute in Greifswald, Germany. But whether the chickens and their eggs are safe to eat—and whether the public will buy them—is an open question, Harder notes.
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