A group of scientific experts, many drawn from the influenza world, has concluded that controversial bird flu studies should be published in full — but only after public concern over the work can be assuaged.

There was no time frame given for how long the scientists and journals involved felt that public relations effort might take, but the World Health Organization official who chaired the meeting in Geneva referred at one point to a period of a few months.

In the meantime, Dr. Keiji Fukuda said, flu scientists involved in these types of studies have agreed to extend their self-imposed moratorium on work aimed at puzzling out what it would take for H5N1 viruses to be able to spread easily among people.

That work, the subject of the disputed studies, involves mutating viruses to the point where they can spread easily among ferrets, the best available model for predicting how a virus might act in people.

The fact a virus spreads easily among ferrets is not a guarantee it would do so in humans, but it is impossible to test the lab-made viruses in people.

Studies of this type have been conducted for several years, fuelled by concern that H5N1 might cause a human pandemic. Currently infections in people appear to be rare, but of those that are spotted, the outcomes are often deadly.

Several earlier attempts failed to produce a more transmissible H5N1 virus, but late last year it emerged that two research groups, one from the Netherlands and the other from Wisconsin, had managed to produce mutated viruses that spread easily among ferrets.

Concerned that the researchers' methods could be used by those with ill intents, the U.S. National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity recommended that the U.S. government ask the journals planning to publish them —Science and Nature — to hold back key portions of the work. The U.S. government did so.

The journals and researchers reluctantly agreed, but on the proviso that a system be set up to ensure people with legitimate need to see the full works would have access to them.

At the WHO meeting, the consensus was that setting up such a system would not be possible, Fukuda said.