Dilemma of freedom vs. security confronts science in a new way
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0217
The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity has called for self-censorship by scientists concerning some information potentially useful to bioterrorists. It’s not physics, but it has obvious implications for all of science.
The NSABB calls itself “a federal advisory committee chartered to provide advice, guidance, and leadership regarding biosecurity oversight of dual use research, defined as biological research with legitimate scientific purpose that may be misused to pose a biologic threat to public health and/or national security.” It lists scientific publishing among its members’ fields of expertise.
Last month, a Washington Post front page carried the story “Scientists asked to withhold details of lab-created flu.” The opening of the corresponding front-page New York Times story, appearing above the fold, requires quoting:
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.
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.
The Post‘s opening paragraph also emphasizes that phrase “for the first time.” The journals in question are Nature and Science. The Times reports that “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 Post reports a similar judgment from Nature‘s editor, Philip Campbell.
The Times quotes Alberts: “It’s a precedent-setting moment, and we need to be careful about the precedent we set.” The Post reports that a spokeswoman for Science said this was the first time the journal “had fielded such a request since it became the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1900.”
A paragraph from the Post captures the story’s dual significance—part biosecurity, part openness of science:
“Censorship is considered the ultimate sin of original research. However, we also have an imperative to keep certain research out of the hands of individuals who could use it for nefarious purposes,” said Michael T. Osterholm, a member of the board who is also director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “It is not unexpected that these two things would clash in this very special situation.”
The story has not yet appeared in a Wall Street Journal print edition.
Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. His reports to AIP are collected each Friday for Science and the Media . He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.