CIDRAP | Submitted by: Soylent "But when tested in ferrets, this mutant virus still didn't spread very easily through close contact. Fouchier and his team then undertook to let the virus evolve naturallya project that he described as really, really stupid... They inoculated one ferret with the mutant virus, and after it got sick, they exposed a second ferret to infectious material from the first one. After they repeated this process 10 times, H5N1 became as easily transmissible as seasonal flu."
