On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Jeswin <phillyj101@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
Yeah I think you're right, selectively breeding the virus, only
allowing ferrets to contact each other through air exchange or
something.
> 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.
>
I think the only restriction to anyone successfully replicating this
work is A) smart enough with basic biotech, and B) having Personal
Protective Equipment (PPE) so the researchers don't kill themselves. I
think the latter is where terrorists would get stopped, carelessness,
or pressure from their terrorizing authorities to get work done faster
seems like it would lead to quick failure
> 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."
>> _______________________________________________
>> biomed mailing list
>> biomed@postbiota.org
>> http://postbiota.org/mailman/listinfo/biomed
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> - Bryan
>> http://heybryan.org/
>> 1 512 203 0507
>>
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Rochester Institute of Technology
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