The controversial study on lethal flu virus strain is likely to be published in full. Last December the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity - NSABB recommended the two papers not be published in full by the journals - Nature and Science. The panel was concerned that details of the studies, which induced mutations in the H5N1 avian flu virus that made it transmissible among mammals by air rather than by close physical contact, could be used for bioterrorism. Critics of the recommendation raised fears that important science was being censored.
Paul Keim of Northern Arizona University said, “We had new information, confidential information, about benefits of this research, and we also had confidential information about the risks involved…and the balance began to change.” Explaining its decision, announced last Friday, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) said in a statement that “the data described in the revised manuscripts do not appear to provide information that would immediately enable misuse of the research in ways that would endanger public health or national security.”
The board was unanimous in recommending that the study conducted at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, be published in full. The journals have said they will publish the papers this year. Experts convened by the WHO in February recommended that the papers be published. Keim was among the experts at that meeting.
Prof Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the author of one of the papers, said his revised version explained more clearly that the virus was "much less lethal" than the NSABB had assumed. In particular the revised paper clarifies that none of the ferrets which contracted the virus in its aerosol form had died – a fact which he admitted was not explicitly clear in the original version.
Fouchier said the NSABB decision was “very much to our pleasure.” He and Keim stressed that nothing would be censored in the paper. Instead, the paper to be published by Science will include “clear and explicit” information about the lethality of the mutated virus, which is less than the NSABB originally believed. In other words, although the genetic mutations made H5N1 more transmissible among mammals, they apparently also made it less deadly. Professor Fouchier said the revised manuscript makes it clear that the virus is not as lethal to ferrets as originally believed. However, the full genetic sequence of the transformed virus will be published along with the steps leading up the creation of the airborne strain, he said. The scientists were speaking ahead of an international conference starting on Tuesday at the Royal Society in London to discuss the bioethics and security aspects of flu work.
Asked whether the NSABB had misunderstood the original papers, Keim said it had spent more than 200 hours reviewing them and faced enormous pressure from all sides - from the journals, from the researchers and from the National Institutes of Health, which funded both studies - to act quickly. “I think this is not the process that should be used for reviewing these types of papers in the future,” he said.
Other scientists, meanwhile, have said that the work should never have been carried out on the grounds that the risks of generating a lethal pandemic bird flu either accidentally or deliberately far outweigh any possible benefits. Professor Fouchier said that he had started the H5N1 experiments in 2007 but it was only last summer that he had succeeded in creating an airborne strain that could be transmitted easily between ferrets. “We did not take it lightly in deciding to communicate these results,” he said.
Professor Sir John Skehel, a world authority on flu viruses, said that just because the mutated H5N1 virus was not lethal to ferrets it cannot be assumed that the same will be true in humans. “Ferrets are the best animal model we have but there is a majority opinion among scientists that they wouldn’t always tell you what would happen in humans,” Professor Skehel said.
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