South Korean scientists have conducted a lab experiment that made a purported wild avian influenza “bird flu” virus 100% lethal in mammals, achieving total death in infected mice by enabling the virus to adapt inside their bodies and spread to others.
The dangerous move comes as the U.S. develops a “next-generation” universal vaccine platform called ‘Generation Gold Standard’ that will focus on avian influenza jab creation, signaling a coordinated international push to engineer and preemptively vaccinate against lab-enhanced bird flu strains with pandemic potential—despite worldwide fallout from similar COVID-era strategies.
Published June 2025 in Virology Journal, the study describes how researchers at Konkuk University infected mice with a highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza strain—one that already contained a small percentage (4%) of a mammalian-adaptive mutation known as PB2-E627K.
That tiny minority of mutant virus was enough to take over and kill every infected host.
“All challenged mice died by 8 dpc. Transmission through direct-contact occurred in 100% of cases, and all contact mice died within 12 days.”
This was not an accidental discovery.
Researchers intentionally infected mammals with a virus they knew contained a mutation that helps bird flu spread and replicate more effectively in mammals, including humans.
Once inside the mice, the mutation exploded to near-total dominance—not just in the lungs, but in the brain, where it caused seizures, ataxia, and fatal neurological damage.
“The PB2-E627K variant, initially present at 4% in the virus stock, was selected and reached near-fixation (~ 100%) in the lungs and brains by 6 days post-challenge and was subsequently transmitted.”
“In dead direct-contact mice, the E627K mutation in PB2 was found at a proportion of 99.8–100% in both the lungs and brains.”
The virus became neurotropic—targeting the brain—and caused seizures and other neurological symptoms before death.
Hellbound and Down 