I was going to post this. I heard it this morning on the BBC. The US
asked that the researcher not post specific details about the sequence
they discovered that permits the transfer of the virus from ferret to
ferret. They used the ferrets in the studies. The Principle
Investigator said that the sequence is important for testing
laboratories and specifically selecting who to send this sequence info
to is cost-prohibitive. Also, it will require countries to come
together and sign an agreement saying this data must be kept secret.
Given that world talks like the recent one in Durban mostly failed to
agree to a binding treaty, I assume the same will happen.
The PI and and persons supporting the censorship both agreed that the
protocol is common knowledge. I don't know if a "terrorist" could
replicate the mutation without some expensive sequencing machines.
Since mutations are random, the probability they replicate the
mutation in an organism is hit or miss. Am I right? If a foreign state
wanted to create an H1N1 bio-weapon, it can be done. If an individual
or a terrorist group wanted to, I would say the success rate is
extremely unlikely.
This sets a new precedence into the restriction/censorship of
scientific knowledge. Saying that the public does not need to know
technical information, information that is not proprietary or
extremely dangerous, dumbs down society to a bunch of hamsters in a
cage.
On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 10:11 AM, Bryan Bishop <kanzure@gmail.com> wrote:
> (Including a cheap shot at amateurs "otherwise known as terrorists")
>
> From: Eugen Leitl <eugen@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: tt@postbiota.org, biomed@postbiota.org, cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net
>
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/health/fearing-terrorism-us-asks-journals-to-censor-articles-on-virus.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
>
> 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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>
>
> --
> - Bryan
> http://heybryan.org/
> 1 512 203 0507
>
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