UK scientists are building new engineered bird flu viruses with enhanced traits inside government labs.
JON FLEETWOOD
A peer-reviewed study published Monday in the Journal of General Virology (Billington et al., September 1, 2025) confirms that UK government scientists at the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) have engineered two new H5 bird flu viruses in the laboratory.
The move follows Russia’s Vector Institute openly engineering a lab-made H5N8 bird flu spike protein—chemically altered with pseudouridine and framed as “mRNA vaccine development”—which plugs directly into the worldwide bird flu pandemic countermeasure pipeline.
Built using reverse genetics, the UK’s newly engineered viruses displayed brand new functions: H5N8 caused neurological disease in ducks, while H5N1 gained a transmission advantage.
In other words, scientists in the UK created fresh lab-built versions of H5N8 and H5N1, and the experiments showed H5N8 learned how to attack the brain while H5N1 learned how to spread more efficiently.
The implications for worldwide bird flu pandemic orchestration are immediate and alarming.
The creation of these brand-new pathogens comes after Congress, the White House, the Department of Energy, the FBI, and the CIA acknowledged that a lab-related incident involving gain-of-function research is most likely the origin of COVID-19, raising concerns that ongoing government experiments like these could trigger another deadly pandemic.
Put bluntly, the UK government is now manufacturing brand-new bird flu pathogens with enhanced traits in the very same way U.S. agencies admit COVID-19 most likely began—inside a lab.
Lab-Created Viruses
The team did not just observe wild flu strains.
They built new versions of H5N1 and H5N8 in the lab by genetic modification.
As the study explains, “De-engineered versions of both viruses were generated by substituting the multi-basic cleavage site (MBCS) with a single-basic cleavage site (SBCS) via reverse genetics (RG)”.
Reverse genetics in new virus creation refers to the process of generating viruses with specific genetic changes by manipulating viral genetic material in the laboratory to produce recombinant or engineered viruses for alleged research or vaccine development.
In plain language: scientists deliberately re-coded the purported viruses to change how they behave, creating entirely new pathogens for experimentation.
New Neurological Function in H5N8
When tested in ducks, the engineered H5N8 virus showed a disturbing new neurological profile never before documented in this way.
The authors report:
“Ducks infected with H5N8- W2 also exhibited more severe neurological signs, including tremors (seven counts), torticollis (one count) and seizures (one count)”.
In other words: the engineered H5N8 made ducks shake, twist their necks, and convulse.
The scientists linked this to brain invasion:
“High REU titres in the brain are consistent with the increased neurological impact of the H5N8- W2- infected ducks”.
This means the virus wasn’t just in the lungs or gut—it penetrated the brain and multiplied there, proving it had gained neurological tropism.
New Transmission Function in H5N1
By contrast, the engineered H5N1 virus was said to spare its hosts, but gained the function of spreading further.
The study confirms:
“All ducks infected with H5N1- W2 survived until the end of the study (14 dpi), whereas only 50% of those infected with H5N8- W2 survived”.
That means while H5N8 killed half the ducks outright, H5N1 kept every duck alive.
But survival came with a trade: prolonged shedding and environmental spread.
The authors write:
“Environmental contamination was found in the drinking and pond water with vRNA detected from 3 dpi in both groups, but less consistently in the H5N8- W2 group… Airborne vRNA was only detected at 7 dpi in the H5N1- W2 group”.
Put simply: H5N1 contaminated water and even air, and it did so more reliably than H5N8.
By keeping its hosts alive longer and ensuring they shed virus into the environment, H5N1 gained a transmission advantage.
Pandemic Orchestration Implications
This study is not about natural drift.
It documents the deliberate creation of novel bird flu viruses with new functional traits.
H5N8 emerged with the ability to invade the brain, while H5N1 evolved to spread better by prolonging host survival and contaminating the environment.
These engineered features mirror the very dynamics that could drive a bird flu pandemic in the real world: neurological severity on one side, efficient transmission on the other.
And they were produced—and tested—under government control in a UK lab.
Bottom Line
The UK’s APHA lab has engineered brand new H5 viruses that went on to display gain-of-function outcomes: neurological disease in H5N8 and transmission advantage in H5N1.
In the authors’ own words, ducks infected with H5N8 “exhibited more severe neurological signs, including tremors… and seizures,” while H5N1-infected ducks “all survived” but shed virus longer with “airborne vRNA” detected.
This means scientists are not only recreating pandemic-capable influenza viruses but enhancing their dangerous properties.
The implications are global: orchestrated laboratory engineering is accelerating the very traits that could fuel the next bird flu pandemic.
This article (UK Engineers 2 New Bird Flu Viruses With Neurological and Transmission Gains: ‘Journal of General Virology’) was created and published by Jon Fleetwood and is republished here under “Fair Use”
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