I posted about this as well. Frankly, I'm not as afraid of the "bad
guys" (maybe out there in caves and basements and garages) as I am of
the scared guys in Washington.
On Dec 21, 10:11 am, Bryan Bishop <kanz...@gmail.com> wrote:
> (Including a cheap shot at amateurs "otherwise known as terrorists")
>
> From: Eugen Leitl <eu...@leitl.org>
> Date: Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 5:26 AM
> Subject: [biomed] Seeing Terror Risk, U.S. Asks Journals to Cut Flu Study
> Facts
> To: t...@postbiota.org, bio...@postbiota.org, cypherpu...@al-qaeda.net
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/health/fearing-terrorism-us-asks-jo...
>
> Seeing Terror Risk, U.S. Asks Journals to Cut Flu Study Facts
>
> By DENISE GRADY and WILLIAM J. BROAD
>
> Published: December 20, 2011
>
> For the first time ever, a government advisory board is asking scientific
> journals not to publish details of certain biomedical experiments, for fear
> that the information could be used by terrorists to create deadly viruses
> and
> touch off epidemics.
>
> National Institute for Biological Standards and Control/Photo Researchers
>
> The A(H5N1) virus largely affects birds and rarely infects people, but it is
> highly deadly when it does.
>
> Kin Cheung/Associated Press
>
> Health workers in Hong Kong killed chickens at a poultry market in 2008.
>
> In the experiments, conducted in the United States and the Netherlands,
> scientists created a highly transmissible form of a deadly flu virus that
> does not normally spread from person to person. It was an ominous step,
> because easy transmission can lead the virus to spread all over the world.
> The work was done in ferrets, which are considered a good model for
> predicting what flu viruses will do in people.
>
> The virus, A(H5N1), causes bird flu, which rarely infects people but has an
> extraordinarily high death rate when it does. Since the virus was first
> detected in 1997, about 600 people have contracted it, and more than half
> have died. Nearly all have caught it from birds, and most cases have been in
> Asia. Scientists have watched the virus, worrying that if it developed the
> ability to spread easily from person to person, it could create one of the
> deadliest pandemics ever.
>
> A government advisory panel, the National Science Advisory Board for
> Biosecurity, overseen by the National Institutes of Health, has asked two
> journals, Science and Nature, to keep certain details out of reports that
> they intend to publish on the research. The panel said conclusions should be
> published, but not "experimental details and mutation data that would enable
> replication of the experiments."
>
> The panel cannot force the journals to censor their articles, but the editor
> of Science, Bruce Alberts, said the journal was taking the recommendations
> seriously and would probably withhold some information — but only if the
> government creates a system to provide the missing information to legitimate
> scientists worldwide who need it.
>
> The journals, the panel, researchers and government officials have been
> grappling with the findings for several months. The Dutch researchers
> presented their work at a virology conference in Malta in September.
>
> Scientists and journal editors are generally adamant about protecting the
> free flow of ideas and information, and ready to fight anything that hints
> at
> censorship.
>
> "I wouldn't call this censorship," Dr. Alberts said. "This is trying to
> avoid
> inappropriate censorship. It's the scientific community trying to step out
> front and be responsible."
>
> He said there was legitimate cause for the concern about the researchers'
> techniques falling into the wrong hands.
>
> "This finding shows it's much easier to evolve this virus to an extremely
> dangerous state where it can be transmitted in aerosols than anybody had
> recognized," he said. Transmission by aerosols means the virus can be spread
> through the air via coughing or sneezing.
>
> Ever since the tightening of security after the terrorist attacks on Sept.
> 11, 2001, scientists have worried that a scientific development would pit
> the
> need for safety against the need to share information. Now, it seems, that
> day has come.
>
> "It's a precedent-setting moment, and we need to be careful about the
> precedent we set," Dr. Alberts said.
>
> Both studies of the virus — one at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam,
> in the Netherlands, and the other at the University of Wisconsin-Madison —
> were paid for by the National Institutes of Health. The idea behind the
> research was to try to find out what genetic changes might make the virus
> easier to transmit. That way, scientists would know how to identify changes
> in the naturally occurring virus that might be warning signals that it was
> developing pandemic potential. It was also hoped that the research might
> lead
> to better treatments.
>
> Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
> Diseases, said the research addressed important public health questions, but
> added, "I'm sure there will be some people who say these experiments never
> should have been done."
>
> Dr. Fauci said staff members at the institutes followed the results of the
> research and flagged it as something that the biosecurity panel should
> evaluate.
>
> The lead researcher at the Erasmus center, Ron Fouchier, did not respond to
> requests for an interview. The center issued a statement saying that
> researchers there had reservations about the panel's recommendation, but
> would observe it.
>
> The Wisconsin researcher, Yoshihiro Kawaoka, was out of the country and "not
> responding to queries," according to a spokesman for the university. But the
> school said its researchers would "respect" the panel's recommendations.
>
> David R. Franz, a biologist who formerly headed the Army defensive
> biological
> lab at Fort Detrick, Md., is on the board and said its decision to
> intervene,
> made in the fall, was quite reasonable.
>
> "My concern is that we don't give amateurs — or terrorists — information
> that
> might let them do something that could really cause a lot a harm," he said
> in
> an interview.
>
> "It's a wake-up call," Dr. Franz added. "We need to make sure that our best
> and most responsible scientists have the information they need to prepare us
> for whatever we might face."
>
> Amy Patterson, director of the office of biotechnology activities at the
> National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Md., said the recommendations
> were a first.
>
> "The board in the past has reviewed manuscripts but never before concluded
> that communications should be restricted in any way," she said in a
> telephone
> interview. "These two bodies of work stress the importance of public health
> preparedness to monitor this virus."
>
> Ronald M. Atlas, a microbiologist at the University of Louisville and past
> president of the American Society for Microbiology, who has advised the
> federal government on issues of germ terrorism, said the hard part of the
> recommendations would be creating a way to move forward in the research with
> a restricted set of responsible scientists.
>
> He said that if researchers had a better understanding of how the virus
> works, they could develop better ways to treat and prevent illness. "That's
> why the research is done," he said.
>
> The government, Dr. Atlas added, "is going to struggle with how to get the
> information out to the right people and still have a barrier" to wide
> sharing
> and inadvertently aiding a terrorist. "That's going to be hard."
>
> Given that some of the information has already been presented openly at
> scientific meetings, and that articles about it have been sent out to other
> researchers for review, experts acknowledged that it may not be possible to
> keep a lid on the potentially dangerous details.
>
> "But I think there will be a culture of responsibility here," Dr. Fauci
> said.
> "At least I hope there will."
>
> The establishment of the board grew out of widespread fears stemming from
> the
> 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States and the ensuing strikes with
> deadly anthrax germs that killed or sickened 22 Americans.
>
> The Bush administration called for wide controls on biological information
> that could potentially help terrorists. And the scientific community firmly
> resisted, arguing that the best defenses came with the open flow of
> information.
>
> In 2002, Dr. Atlas, then the president-elect of the American Society for
> Microbiology, objected publicly to "anything that smacked of censorship."
>
> The federal board was established in 2004 as a compromise and is strictly
> advisory. It has 25 voting members appointed by the secretary of health and
> human services, and has 18 ex officio members from other federal agencies.
>
> Federal officials said Tuesday that the board has discussed information
> controls on only three or four occasions. The first centered on the genetic
> sequencing of the H1N1 virus that caused the 1918 flu pandemic, in which up
> to 100 million people died, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters
> in human history.
>
> "We chose to recommend publication without any modifications," Dr. Franz,
> the
> former head of the Army lab, recalled. "The more our good scientists know
> about problems, the better prepared they are to fix them."
>
> This fall, federal officials said, the board wrestled with the content of
> H5N1 papers to Science and Nature, and in late November contacted the
> journals about its recommendation to restrict information on the methods
> that
> the scientists used to modify the deadly virus.
>
> "The ability of this virus to cross species lines in this manner has not
> previously been appreciated," said Dr. Patterson of the National Institutes
> of Health. "Everyone involved in this matter wants to do the proper thing."
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>
> --
> - Bryanhttp://heybryan.org/
> 1 512 203 0507
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