NYTimes.com Article: Science Panel Urges Review of Research Terrorists Could Use

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Science Panel Urges Review of Research Terrorists Could Use
>
> October 9, 2003
>  By NICHOLAS WADE
>
>
>
>
>
> Despite scientists' general distaste for any constraints on
> research, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences
> yesterday recommended prior review, at the university and
> federal levels, of experiments that could help terrorists
> or hostile nations make biological weapons.
>
> The panel's work was initiated by the academy, the leading
> scientific body in the nation, and represents an attempt by
> biologists to put their own review systems in place before
> others might do so for them.
>
> But Dr. John H. Marburger, science adviser to President
> Bush, suggested that the report might not go far enough.
> Though it was "a very positive move by the scientific
> community, I am sure there are other things that will
> happen in the future," he said.
>
> "So it isn't as if this is a magic bullet that will bring
> an end to all discussion of the issue," Dr. Marburger said.
> Asked what further measures might be necessary, he said
> only that this was the first time biologists had defined
> areas of concern and that the proposed list of seven fields
> needed more discussion.
>
> Dr. Marburger said the administration had not yet decided
> whether or how to act on the proposal.
>
> Though physicists have long lived with the fact that
> certain areas of research are classified and cannot be
> discussed openly, biologists are relatively new to security
> concerns. Apart from biological defense research, done
> mostly at military institutions, academic biology is
> focused on medicine and conducted without security
> restraints.
>
> The academy panel has sought to institute some measure of
> review of possibly harmful biomedical research without
> burdening scientific research with onerous controls. Its
> proposed solution is to reinvigorate a review system put in
> place after a 1975 conference at which biologists called
> for a moratorium on certain genetic engineering experiments
> then becoming possible.
>
> Concern about those experiments has long since faded. But
> the review system remains, with biosafety committees at all
> leading research universities and the federal Recombinant
> DNA Advisory Committee, known as the R.A.C.
>
> The National Academy of Sciences panel, led by Dr. Gerald
> Fink of the Whitehead Institute at M.I.T., said research
> proposals in seven areas of biology should be reviewed by
> both a scientist's local biosafety committee and by the
> R.A.C. Local committees could decree that an experiment
> should not be conducted on their premises, and the federal
> committee could advise the director of the National
> Institutes of Health that an experiment should not receive
> government money. The government has the power to make any
> research secret and therefore prevent the work from being
> published, but in practice would not wish to classify large
> chunks of biomedical research like immunology and virology.
>
>
> Both Dr. Fink and another panel member, Dr. Ronald Atlas of
> the University of Louisville, said the academy had taken up
> the security issue on its own initiative, not from
> government pressure, and had paid for the study. Most
> academy studies are financed by the government.
>
> The time has come when "interaction between the security
> community and life scientists is extremely important, so
> that we speak the same language," Dr. Fink said.
>
> The panel's work seems likely to be palatable to many
> scientists, but it remains to be seen if those concerned
> with national security will be satisfied.
>
> A national security expert who served on the panel, Dr.
> David Franz of the Southern Research Institute, said he
> expected that "individuals who look carefully at this will
> see it as a reasonable approach."
>
> Dr. Donald Kennedy, editor of Science magazine and former
> president of Stanford, said his impression of the report
> was "very favorable." Dr. Kennedy praised the panel for
> deciding not to second-guess journal editors on what could
> be published, and for having avoided a step under
> discussion, that of creating a murky category of research
> that would be deemed somehow sensitive but not so dangerous
> as to be classified.
>
> A chief ingredient of the panel's ideas is the creation of
> an advisory committee high in the Department of Health and
> Human Services where biologists and national security
> experts could swap ideas and fashion advice for the R.A.C.
> and local biosafety committees.
>
> Such guidance might be in great demand. One practical
> problem is that neither the R.A.C. nor the local committees
> have any expertise in bioterrorism or national security.
>
> If the administration accepts the panel's ideas,
> Congressional action could be needed to set up the proposed
> biological defense advisory committee. Or it could be
> created by executive order, though Congress would have to
> approve its budget. The new duties of the R.A.C. and local
> safety committees, however, could be ordained by the
> director of the National Institutes of Health through
> standard regulatory procedures, panel members said.
>
> Though the anthrax mailings of fall 2001 demonstrated the
> havoc that terrorists might wreak with biotechnology, the
> Fink panel's work began 15 months earlier, stimulated by an
> Australian effort to enhance the natural potency of a
> virus, said Dr. Eileen Choffnes, the study director for the
> panel. To eradicate mice in Australia, the scientists
> souped up the mousepox virus with a human gene. The
> enhanced virus killed even mice that were vaccinated
> against the disease.
>
> Both the authors and editors of The Journal of Virology, to
> which they submitted their work, knew the paper could give
> terrorists direct ideas about enhancing human pathogens.
> But realizing that all the components of the research had
> already been published, the editors decided to publish the
> article, though after a two-year delay.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/09/science/09RESE.html?ex=1066696500&ei=1&en=96937afe8bb4abd9
>
>
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