Few know that man made H1N1 pandemic in 1977 was caused by leak from Chinese lab likely in rush to make vaccine for outbreak in US that never happened, though 25 died from vaccine-March 31, 2014, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

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“There has been virtually no public awareness of the 1977 H1N1 pandemic and its laboratory origins.” 

March 31, 2014, “Threatened pandemics and laboratory escapes: Self-fulfilling prophecies,“ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Martin Furmanski 

“The public health danger from the escape, from laboratories, of viruses capable of causing pandemics has become the subject of considerable, well-merited discussion, spurred by “gain of function” experiments….The risk of laboratory escape of these high-consequence pathogens far outweighs any potential advance.… 

One occurred in 1977, and it occurred because of concern that a natural pandemic was imminent. Many other laboratory escapes of high-consequence pathogens have occurred….Ironically, these laboratories were working with pathogens to prevent the very outbreaks they ultimately caused. For that reason, the tragic consequences have been called “self-fulfilling prophecies.”… 

In 1976, H1N1 swine influenza virus struck Fort Dix, causing 13 hospitalizations and one death. The specter of a reprise of the deadly 1918 pandemic triggered an unprecedented effort to immunize all Americans. No swine H1N1 pandemic materialized, however, and complications of immunization truncated the program after 48 million immunizations, which eventually caused 25 deaths.… 

The most famous case of a released laboratory strain is the re-emergent H1N1 influenza-A virus which was first observed in China in May of 1977.…The virus may have escaped from a lab attempting to prepare an attenuated H1N1 vaccine in response to the US swine flu pandemic alert. 

The 1977 pandemic spread rapidly worldwide but was limited to those under 20 years of age: Older persons were immune from exposures before 1957. Its attack rate was high (20 to 70 percent) in schools and military camps, but mercifully it caused mild disease, and fatalities were few. It continued to circulate until 2009, when the pH1N1 virus replaced it. There has been virtually no public awareness of the 1977 H1N1 pandemic and its laboratory origins, despite the clear analogy to current concern [in 2014] about a potential H5N1 or H7N9 avian influenza pandemic and “gain of function” experiments.”…

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