The World Health Organisation said that they were initially very concerned

The World Health Organisation is vehemently denying that the new influenza swine virus was a result of a blunder in a laboratory, and that the rumours which started when an Australian scientist who had studied the gene sequences of the influenza virus claimed that because it was not similar to usual swine flu viruses, and it had a large amount of the amino acid lysine as well as significant mutations it must have been made in vaccine laboratories.

Adrian Gibbs a retired professor from the Australian National University is not new to controversy and previously had other research published in the medical journal Science which debunked the idea that the Spanish influenza virus was an avian influenza virus, something which is now widely accepted. The World Health Organisation said that they were initially very concerned about this rumour and took it “very seriously”. Dr. Keiji Fukuda from the WHO said however that it was their belief that the new swine influenza virus was a naturally occurring one and not one which was derived from lab.

The rumour spread around the world extremely rapidly and all major news agencies reported it. However most serious medical establishments such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in America were quick to pour scorn on the idea. Some news agencies even speculated that the virus had deliberately been manufactured as a form of bioterrorism. The World Health Organisation said that they were not too concerned about this rumour now because it had shown to be false and they hoped that people would use their heads and not believe it. In influenza pandemic situations however false rumours can be catastrophic and the WHO needs to be able to communicate effectively with nations and health authorities around the world in order to dispense correct medical advice and medicine.

The advantages of having modern communications to spread information quickly are only good if they dispense the correct information and don’t peddle false rumours.  In Pakistan for example efforts to vaccinate boys from the polio disease were seriously undermined by a false rumour which claimed that the vaccine would cause impotence in later life, which led to hundreds of boys not being vaccinated and thus suffering from polio.