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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