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- Posted Wednesday February 1, 2012
TGen-NAU distinguished professor leads national panel in precedent-setting policy published in Science and Nature
NSABB Chair Dr. Paul Keim leads panel's call for a global
conversation on the conduct and publication of avian flu
research
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. - Feb. 1, 2012 - The U.S. National Science
Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) today published a
precedent-setting policy statement warning about the "unusually
high magnitude" risk from unrestricted publication of avian flu
research.
The NSABB is chaired by Dr. Paul Keim, Director of the Pathogen
Genomics Division of the Translational Genomics Research Institute
(TGen), and a Regents Professor of Biology at Northern Arizona
University, and Director of NAU's Center for Microbial Genetics and
Genomics.
The NSABB statement concerns recent, though as yet unpublished,
research that showed how a strain of deadly avian flu virus could
be made that is easily transmitted between mammals, including
humans. Currently, the highly pathogenic A/H5N1 avian influenza
virus - though a serious public health concern since its
identification in Asia in 1997 - rarely infects people, because it
is not easily transmitted among mammals.
The NSABB, which represents dozens of government and academic
entities, was asked by the federal government to review the
research prior to its publication because of its "dual use,"
meaning its potential for being used for good or bad
purposes.
"A balance must be struck between academic freedom and protecting
the greater good of mankind from potential danger," Dr. Keim said,
quoting from the policy statement.
The NSABB weighed the benefits of the recent research, which could
produce greater preparedness and potentially produce novel
strategies leading to disease control, against the threat that
details of the research could fall into the wrong hands.
"Because the NSABB found that there was significant potential for
harm in fully publishing these results and that the harm exceeded
the benefits of publication, we therefore recommended that the work
not be fully communicated in an open forum," the policy statement
says. "We found the potential risk of public harm to be of
unusually high magnitude."
The NSABB statement was published online today by the prestigious
scientific journals Science and Nature. It will be published in
print by the journals later this month.
"Our concern is that publishing these experiments in detail would
provide information to someone or some organization or government
that would help them develop similar mammal-adapted influenza
A/H5N1 viruses for harmful purposes," the statement says. "A
pandemic or the deliberate release of a transmissible highly
pathogenic influenza A/H5N1 virus would be an unimaginable
catastrophe for which the world is currently inadequately
prepared."
The statement notes that science is in a revolutionary period of
dramatically expanded technological capabilities, enabling the
increased ability to manipulate the genetic material of
microbes.
"With this has come unprecedented potential for better control of
infectious diseases and significant societal benefit. However,
there is also a growing risk that the same science will be
deliberately misused and that the consequences could be
catastrophic," says the statement, which calls for a "rapid and
broad international discussion of dual use research policy
concerning A/H5N1 influenza virus with the goal of developing a
consensus on the path forward."
