The creation of a modified H5N1 bird flu virus that can be transmitted through the air mammal-to-mammal has aroused wide consternation; a biosecurity advisory board to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommended the research findings be published only in a redacted form, so that a recipe for the hugely dangerous variant would not circulate widely.
The decisions this week by the Rotterdam and Madison researchers responsible for making the H5N1 virus variant to suspend their research for 60 days, and by Science and Nature magazines honor the HHS recommendation and publish the research in a redacted form, are reassuring but also somewhat disconcerting.
The statement by the Rotterdam and Madison research leaders, co-published online by Science and Nature yesterday, makes an odd impression. Written in a curious hybrid of third-person and first-person narration, it characterizes their research as “critical information that advances our understanding of influenza transmission” and yet recognizes “that we and the rest of the scientific community need to clearly explain the benefits of this important research.” They are declaring a 60 day moratorium on their work, they say, because “organizations and governments around the world need time to find the best solutions for opportunities and challenges that stem from this work.”
Where, one wonders, are the normally outstanding editors of Science and Nature? We don’t find solutions to opportunities, and had an editor firmly pointed this out to the lead researchers, perhaps they would have had to address the real issues raised by their work rather than tiptoe around them. Their statement refers to a “perceived fear that the ferret-transmissible H5HA viruses may escape from the laboratory,” as if this were the only or the main concern. The authors do not, contrary to what The New York Times reported today, refer at all the possibility of somebody maliciously replicating the virus variant and unleashing it on the world.
The discomfiting impression is that the lead researchers just do not get it, and that they have accepted some limited restrictions kicking and screaming. That impression is amplified by what the Rotterdam lead researcher Ron Fouchier told the Times: “It is unfortunate that we need to take this step to stop the controversy in the United States,” he said. “I think if this were communicated better in the United States, it might not have been needed to do this.”
Actually, if the researchers had never publicized their news at all and instead had communicated it confidentially to relevant authorities “it might not have been needed to do this.” Perhaps the researchers could have taken inspiration from a practice common in software engineering, where discovered vulnerabilities are communicated “responsibly,” giving software engineers the opportunity to fix them before they are widely known.
However that may be, somebody should probably tell Dr. Fouchier that the United States has probably the world’s strongest prohibition on “prior restraint” in publishing, and that the principle of no prior restraint is breached only with the greatest reluctance. Over government objections, The New York Times was allowed to publish the Pentagon papers, undermining the case for the Vietnam War, and The Progressive magazine published “The H-Bomb Secret,” despite Cold War paranoia.
One of the articles posted in Science magazine’s H5N1 bird flu package yesterday does a nice job of putting the HHS recommendation in the context of concerns about prior restraint. Putting the current controversy in the context of past cases, constitutional law, and government procedure, John D. Kraemer and Lawrence O. Gostin of Georgetown University emphasize that HHS merely asked Science and Nature to exercise restraint, without ordering them to do so.
A second article makes a strong case that our main focus should be on eradicating the bird flu virus itself, not bioterrorism or laboratory escape. The two studies “are a wake up call,” says Daniel R. Perez, of the University of Maryland’s Department of Veterinary Medicine. “Make no mistake, it is likely that these viruses can emerge in the field.”
If a human-transmittable bird flu virus emerges, will we be able to detect it and counteract it before it starts to wreck havoc? Not likely, say Michael T. Osterholm and Donald A. Henderson. Osterholm, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Minnesota and Henderson, a biosecurity expert at the University of Pittsburgh, highly affected countries like Egypt and Indonesia are not doing a good job of detecting and tracking the existing bird flu virus. So the notion that the Rotterdam-Madison research must be published in every detail to give us the tools to fight a human transmittable virus does not hold water. But “should a highly transmissible and virulent H5N1 influenza virus that is of human making cause a catastrophic pandemic, whether as the result of intentional or unintentional release, the world will hold life sciences accountable for what it did or did not do to minimize that risk.”
The 60-day moratorium is a good start, but there’s every reason to think more time than that will be needed to address the complex issues raised by the modified bird flu virus, as Osterholm told a reporter for Nature. Over-eager and excessively complacent researchers like Fouchier should be ignored, and the world should take as much time as it needs to develop procedures to deal with situations like this one. Meanwhile, as Perez argues and Osterholm and Henderson imply, we need to launch a much more aggressive campaign against the existing unmodified bird flu virus.
