dr. thomas ingelsby, chief executive officer and director, center for biosecurity, university of pittsburgh medical center. welcome back. >> mr. chairman, thank you for the chance to speak to you today. i themmy director for the center for biosecurity of upmc. i am an infectious disease physician by training and have seen many patients with influenza die, despite excellent medical care in american hospitals. for many years, my center colleagues and i have been studying avian and pandemic flu and the public health actions that need to be taken to protect us from those challenges. and like all of you, i am deeply concerned that h5n1 is a major global threat. i have been opposed to the publication of the fouchier manuscript. just as it kills ferrets when instilled into their tracheas this engineered virus also kills ferrets the same way. so there's no evidence that i've seen publicly presented that this engineered virus would have less virulence than h5n1 would. were it to cause a human infection it could acquire new virulence properties. if it led to human infection, we can't rule out the cha