According to the editor of the scientific journal Nature, Dr Philip Campbell current procedures to assess and censor medical research potentially of use to terrorists need to be improved. He was speaking about the recent controversy regarding the bird flu virus H5N1 study. The study was initially stopped from publication fearing risk of bioterrorism. He was speaking to BBC News.
Two research papers had raised the concern of anti-terrorist agencies. One was submitted to Nature; the other to another leading journal, Science. The Science paper has yet to appear.
The work, conducted by a team led by influenza virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Tokyo, suggests that as few as three changes to the main gene on the surface of some H5N1 flu viruses might allow the virus to transmit efficiently among mammals - perhaps even humans.
Kawaoka and his team managed to create a hybrid virus that would transmit through the air, passing from infected to healthy ferrets, which were used in the experiment as a stand in for people. The newly transmissible virus needed four mutations in the surface gene, the hemagglutinin, which gives a flu virus the H portion of it name.
One of the mutations is already seen in viruses in the Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia and Europe, potentially leaving the need for only three more, if the virus were to take this route to gain the capacity to pass from human to human. “Our study shows that relatively few amino acid mutations are sufficient for a virus with an avian H5 hemagglutinin to acquire the ability to transmit in mammals,” Kawaoka said in a press release.
The second study, by Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier, was only cleared for publication by the Dutch government late last week. It is to be published in Science, though a date has not yet been announced.
Based on its potential to cause harm the US National Security Advisory Board for Biotechnology (NSABB) to ask both journals last November to take out some sensitive parts of the research that it believed could be used by terrorists to develop a bio-weapon. Many in the scientific community, including the researchers concerned, argued that the benefits of publishing the research in full outweighed the risks. The purpose of the work was to help those trying to develop a vaccine against the virus and to track the spread of the disease. Scientists felt this was a breach of academic freedom.
The NSABB urged that a way be found to make deleted material available to legitimate researchers. However after discussions mediated by the World Health Organization earlier this year, it was concluded that there was no practical way of doing this, at least on a reasonable timescale, and so both Journals decided to publish the research.
Dr Campbell said that the current process for establishing whether medical research should be censored was “very, very problematic”. “If we are to go down the censorship route, how do you decide which researchers should get the sensitive information? And how can you realistically ensure that once it is in a university environment that it won't go further?” He also believes that the NSABB was too hasty to recommend censorship of the research. “The process was too closed. People were having conversations only by phone and there was insufficient consultation of the researchers and of other experts,” Dr Campbell said.
Dr Campbell believes that the NSABB and the WHO should continue to play an important role, but also he says that it's the responsibility of journal editors such as himself to consult the views of the community and the security agencies. :We have access to the very best advice in such circumstances. I would also be willing to consider a more formal and collective process…I can't readily conceive of how that might work in practice, but I'm happy to do anything that makes science more trusted where dangerous organisms are concerned.”
“It really is a wonderful study,” said Richard Webby, director of a World Health Organization collaborating center that focuses on studies of animal and bird influenza viruses at St. Jude Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. Webby suggested the mutations that pushed Kawaoka's virus to become transmissible in mammals will likely not come as a surprise to others doing this type of work.
Webby said flu research will likely come under more oversight going forward, with far more attention paid to any work that might potentially be seen as so-called dual use research of concern - science that could be used for good or for evil. He said that will probably lead to “much more prior approval or ongoing monitoring of this type of research.” “There's certainly going to be more paperwork. But in the long run it's surely going to be a whole lot easier than what we've just been through since December of last year,” he said.
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