In Ferreting Out Science’s Secrets, There Is No Room for Censorship

Ferret photo via Wikimedia Commons

On Tuesday afternoon, the Washington Post announced that the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) has officially asked two scientific journals to censor portions of manuscripts that are pending for publication:

The federal government on Tuesday asked two science journals to censor parts of two papers describing how researchers produced what appears to be a far more dangerous version of the “bird flu” virus that has circulated in Asia for more than a decade.

/snip/

After weeks of reviewing the manuscripts the board recommended their “general conclusions” be published but “not include the methodological and other details that could enable replication of the experiments by those who would seek to do harm.”

The board — 23 scientists and public-health experts from outside the government, and 18 from within — cannot stop publication. Its advice goes to the Department of Health and Human Services, whose leaders will ask the journals — Science, published in Washington, and Nature, published in London — to comply.

The folly of the board’s request is monumental. First of all, it’s already too late for the workers to “not include the methodological and other details that could enable replication of the experiments”. Key portions of this work were described in a November 23 ScienceInsider article that summarized even earlier publications:

The virus is an H5N1 avian influenza strain that has been genetically altered and is now easily transmissible between ferrets, the animals that most closely mimic the human response to flu. Scientists believe it’s likely that the pathogen, if it emerged in nature or were released, would trigger an influenza pandemic, quite possibly with many millions of deaths.

/snip/

Although he declined to discuss details of the research because the paper is still under review, Fouchier confirmed the details given in news stories in New Scientist and Scientific American about a September meeting in Malta where he first presented the study. Those stories describe how Fouchier initially tried to make the virus more transmissible by making specific changes to its genome, using a process called reverse genetics; when that failed, he passed the virus from one ferret to another multiple times, a low-tech and time-honored method of making a pathogen adapt to a new host.

After 10 generations, the virus had become “airborne”: Healthy ferrets became infected simply by being housed in a cage next to a sick one. The airborne strain had five mutations in two genes, each of which have already been found in nature, Fouchier says; just never all at once in the same strain.

At this point, if the details of just which precise mutations occur in the pathogenic virus that was developed are published, it should make no difference, because press reports have already confirmed that the most basic approach one could take, involving a simple genetic selection experiment, gives the result of the more pathogenic virus. It’s even likely there are other combinations of mutations that would make an extremely pathogenic virus if the selection process were repeated in a new experiment.

But the folly of the NSABB decision goes much deeper and is just another aspect of the hysteria that has gripped the United States since the al Qaeda attack on 9/11 and the anthrax attack just a few weeks later. One aspect of this hysteria has been an attempt to make far too many things secret. Much attention has been paid to the over-classification of intelligence information, but the over-classification of scientific information is just as insidious.

No matter how many bits of intelligence or scientific information are made secret, the fact remains that determined terrorists have a multitude of fully described weapons systems to employ in an attack. By stifling publication of basic scientific research into materials that could have weapons potential, the opportunity to develop useful countermeasures becomes significantly diminished.

A real-world example from around the time of the 2001 attacks provides a perfect demonstration of the value of publication of basic information.  In his book The Demon in the Freezer, Richard Preston describes how an Australian scientist, Ronald J. Jackson, was conducting experiments aimed at developing new methods to control mouse populations by rendering them sterile.  Jackson’s group worked with the mousepox virus, which is very closely related to the deadly human smallpox virus.  From another description:

It was a classic purely scientific experiment. Australian researchers were interested in, of all things, mouse contraceptives. To this end they modified a mousepox virus to contain the gene for interleukin-4 (IL-4) as well as the mouse egg shell protein (ZP3). The egg shell protein was there to encourage a contraceptive response against the mouse’s own eggs. The IL-4 gene was there to increase the immune response against ZP3 protein, so as to make the contraceptive response more effective. The mousepox itself was a relatively benign virus, of little threat to the health of the mice themselves.

The results were, to put it mildly, unexpected. When the genetically engineered mousepox was put into mice the mice simply died. The supposedly benign mousepox virus was discovered to have become a killer. And not only a killer, but a super-killer: 100% of the mice died. The scientists thought they might learn something useful about mouse contraception, but instead they had learned how to create a universally fatal virus. And this killer virus had been created via a very simple genetic manipulation, accessible to every country with a few PhD microbiologists. Imagine their surprise.

The same controversy now facing the bird flu researchers faced Jackson and his group. They first described their results in a poster at a meeting in Montpellier, France in September, 2000.  The publication question was discussed by BBC in January, 2001:

The potential for abuse of this discovery is real but virus expert, Professor [John] Oxford, argues that to prevent all similar research would hinder efforts to tackle disease. Similarly concerns have been raised concerning publishing such findings and the freedom of the scientific press.

Before publishing their study the mousepox researchers consulted the Australian Department of Defence. The researchers reasons for wanting to publish were found to be justified when they explained that they wanted to make the scientific community aware that creating severe organisms can happen by accident. A full report is due to appear in the Journal of Virology in February.

One aspect of the Jackson virus noted in Preston’s book is that the engineered virus even killed most mice that had been vaccinated against the unchanged mousepox virus.  This work was extended in 2009 and then used to develop a treatment plan that defeats the souped-up virus:

 A research team backed by a federal grant has created a genetically engineered mousepox virus designed to evade vaccines, underscoring biotechnology’s deadly potential and stirring debate over whether such research plays into the hands of terrorists.

The team at Saint Louis University, led by Mark Buller, created the superbug to figure out how to defeat it, a key goal of the government’s anti-terrorism plan.

The researchers designed a two-drug cocktail that promises to defeat their exceptionally deadly virus. They hope to publish their work soon in a peer review journal.

/snip/

Some feared that publication of such information, regardless of whether scientists’ intentions are altruistic, could help terrorists create biological weapons laced with genetically modified superbugs. Such germs are created by splicing drug-resistant genes in viruses normally defeated by vaccines.

/snip/

Buller counters that publicizing such work will deter terrorists by showing that scientists can build defenses against souped-up bioweapons. Buller also believes scientists must genetically engineer pathogens to understand how to defeat them.

If Jackson’s work had been suppressed, Buller wouldn’t have known where to start in developing his virus for which he was able to develop an effective treatment. Development of an enhanced smallpox virus using Jackson’s discovery seems highly unlikely, since smallpox has been eradicated from nature and it is believed that very few laboratory samples remain viable, so it seems virtually impossible for terrorists to get access to the virus in order to make the simple changes Jackson discovered.

However, in the case of the bird flu version of influenza virus, the basic flu virus is found worldwide and undergoes rapid changes. The fact that flu virus changes rapidly suggests that, as mentioned in the snippet above from ScienceInsider, a version similar that developed in the controversial experiment could even arise naturally. Those who would suppress publication of details on how Fouchier’s group developed the pathogenic virus would prevent responsible researchers repeating the work in order to develop an effective treatment for the virus.  Since the virus could arise naturally, preventing work on a treatment is completely irresponsible.

No killer virus was produced and unleashed on the world because of publication of the Australian mouse virus work.  And partly because the work was published, there now is a model treatment plan that could be used even if an engineered smallpox virus were released or evolved unexpectedly from an unknown reservoir.  Full publication of the bird flu virus work is essential for us to have the best possible chance for effective treatment if and when such a pathogenic version evolves in the wild.

image_print
19 replies
  1. shekissesfrogs says:

    Presages a return to the dark ages.

    There is an HBO series on the medicis of spain. One task that would cement their authority would be to finish construction on a eyesore of an unfinished building in the center of florence, but the knowledge to finish it has been lost/suppressed, including the recipe for cement. They sent people into crypts and tombs looking for old manuscripts or documents and to other countries to revive the sciences in popelandia. and ultimately inspired the Renaissance.
    It looks like they want us to do that again.

  2. Jim White says:

    And a chicken in Hong Kong was just found to have bird flu:

    Health workers here began slaughtering more than 17,000 chickens on Wednesday after a carcass infected with bird flu was found at a poultry market, government officials said.

    The culling is part of a series of precautionary steps being taken after the chicken carcass was found to have a “highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus,” York Chow, Hong Kong’s secretary for food and health, said in a statement. Hong Kong officials also raised the territory’s bird flu alert to “serious,” increasing monitoring for influenza at hospitals and closed the market where the carcass was discovered until Jan. 12.

    Gosh, it sure would be nice if we had a model system for developing treatments for this virus…

  3. FrankProbst says:

    “At this point, if the details of just which precise mutations occur in the pathogenic virus that was developed are published, it should make no difference, because press reports have already confirmed that the most basic approach one could take, involving a simple genetic selection experiment, gives the result of the more pathogenic virus.”

    Well, from a practical standpoint, the difference is 10 generations of ferrets.

    It’s one thing to build a mutated virus. I’d say it’s fairly easy, actually, in this day and age, for someone with a MS in just about any branch of molecular biology to do it, given the right equipment. So making the “new” virus if the sequence were published would be pretty easy to do, and it could be done at fairly low risk to the intrepid terrorist(s).

    On the other hand, maintaining an aerosol-isolated colony of ferrets is something most people wouldn’t be able to do. And they’d have to be aerosol-isolated, because you’re actively trying to make a strain of H5N1 that’s airborne, and since you’re making mutated viruses, you have no idea if your H5N1 vaccine is going to protect you or not. So if you take this approach, and you screw it up, you’ve got a very good chance of being the first victim of your new super virus.

    I think the NSABB go this one right. Other groups that want to work on this new strain of H5N1 can either ask for it or ask what the mutations are, and it should be fairly easy for the government to monitor who has the strains/information. (I’d be surprised if they weren’t already tracking all “regular” H5N1 requests already.) The bulk of the work will be published, and all legitimate work will continue, while work by bioterrorists will be inhibited. Seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

  4. Jim White says:

    @FrankProbst: That same level of aerosol containment would be needed for the terrorists in carrying out the key step of getting from the synthesized genes to a live virus, so I don’t think I buy your argument that they have it any easier once they know the gene sequences that are needed.

  5. orionATL says:

    jim white writes:

    “…Development of an enhanced smallpox virus using Jackson’s discovery seems highly unlikely, since smallpox has been eradicated from nature and it is believed that very few laboratory samples remain viable, so it seems virtually impossible for terrorists to get access to the virus in order to make the simple changes Jackson discovered…”

    well, now,

    that depends on your definition of “terrorist”.

    the u.s. gov’t has stocks of smallpox and

    the u.s, military and paramilitary (cia) have committed, and are continuing to commit, terrorist acts in pakistan, afghanistan, and yemen, for example.

    i would be astonished if u.s. gov’t weapons scientists are not “looking into creating”, if not actually creating and testing, just such a super-smallpox, super-anthrax, super-ebola/hanta, or super-h1n1 – choose your favorite flavor.

    in fact, the motive for this current effort to suppress science here in the u.s. may be to prevent others from investigating and perfecting what u.s. military scientists are currently working to perfect.

  6. orionATL says:

    i’d like to know who is on this board and

    what are its bureaucratic antecedents and its current institutional attachments.

    might it be an interior ministry, aka, dep’t of homeland security, creature?

  7. Jim White says:

    @orionATL: Yeah, I thought that one of the astute observers around here would point out just where those last few repositories of smallpox are. There’s a good chance Russia still has some, too.

  8. orionATL says:

    i don’t want to be naive about garage/out-in-the-woods home-grown terrorists,

    but it seems to me the most likely creators of any type of “weaponized” super-bug would be gov’ts with a high level of competent scientific resources – people, equipment, physical space, and security structure.

    the suspicions, well and thoughtfully aired here, regarding the creation of the super-anthrax used in the anthrax “attack” in the u.s. in 2001, seem to me to trend in that direction.

    large drug manufacturers might do some such work, but, apart from a gov’t contract, there would seem to be little good and great potential grief for them to become thus involved.

  9. scribe says:

    @Jim White: At the end, Russia and the US were the only two countries which had stocks of smallpox. Last I recall, and this goes back to the early post-communism days, there were reports in the West that the Russian stocks were stored in an unguarded refrigerator in the basement of a scientific institute in Moscow (while CDC’s were in a top level biohazard facility in Atlanta). There were big disputes over whether to detroy these remaining stocks, centered around the probability that such was unverifiable but couched in moral debates (from Rethuglicans, as I recall it, about the time the were making jokes about nuking the gay whales) over whether it was moral to deliberately cause the extinction of a species.

    While it may have been eradicated in nature, that doesn’t mean it’s been destroyed. Not for nothing, a brief cruise around the CDC website shows a lot of attention paid to smallpox, most of it under the “Ready” logo DHS is so fond of, and a lot of “response team” references and such. Shows you where their mindset is.

    And, FWIW, there is a long history of patents being granted for classified technology (or technology and the application being classified after the patent application came in), the patents themselves and their mere existence being classified in many instances, and often at government insistence. So, burying new developments under the reason of protecting national security is nothing new. It’s just that this time it’s being called “censorship”.

  10. Jim White says:

    @scribe: Preston’s book has a long and very well done section on the issues surrounding whether to destroy the only smallpox stocks and the subsequent concern over the security of the Soviet stocks. Well worth the read.

  11. PeasantParty says:

    Thank you for posting this info. I saw the link and could not understand why those lab scientist have no ethics or mind as to how many children this will kill.

  12. Bob Schacht says:

    @orionATL:

    it seems to me the most likely creators of any type of “weaponized” super-bug would be gov’ts with a high level of competent scientific resources – people, equipment, physical space, and security structure.

    the suspicions, well and thoughtfully aired here, regarding the creation of the super-anthrax used in the anthrax “attack” in the u.s. in 2001, seem to me to trend in that direction.

    large drug manufacturers might do some such work, but, apart from a gov’t contract, there would seem to be little good and great potential grief for them to become thus involved.

    What’s that old investigative slogan? Motive, means & money? Or wait, what was the third member of that triumvirate? (money included in means?)
    That’s why I think Dick Cheney lurks in the background of the Anthrax attacks.
    1. He had a war in Iraq to wage, and he needed a scared public to let him do what he wanted
    2. Through his office, he had access to the people in all the Anthrax labs in the country, and could determine who he could get to do what.
    3. His office had access to more than enough money to fund an Anthrax caper.

    Bob in AZ

  13. orionATL says:

    @Jim White:

    not at all, jim.

    it occurred to me that if i was that curious, maybe i should type a few for letters into google, get the info, and share it – in between checking amazon deliveries :)

    i didn’t know any of the folks, but i was interested to see who they might be, professionally.

    even more interesting was the presence of an ex-officio team.

  14. FrankProbst says:

    @JimWhite at 4

    It’s one thing to contain a liquid culture of virus–you just do all your work in a laminar-flow hood. Almost every molecular biology lab in the country has one. They’re roughly 8′ x 6′ x 3′.

    It’s quite another to house a bunch of ferrets in aerosol-isolated conditions. They’re extremely intelligent animals, and the work being done here is fairly dangerous. I don’t know the authors of this study, but I would assume the work is being done in a fairly large, fairly sophisticated facility dedicated to fairly dangerous research.

    The former work could be done by a grad student, technician, or post-doc who is working late in a standard molecular biology laboratory laboratory (assuming they could get a culture of H5N1 to start with).

    The latter work can only be done in a fairly high-tech containment environment. You’d also need a lot of ferrets, which I’m assuming are not easy to buy in bulk.

    They made the right call on this one.

  15. orionATL says:

    i think the point that should never be forgotten in this type of “silent/stealth” game of intimidation of american scientists – and i have little doubt that this is precisely what was intended by the board’s action – is the link between a scientist’s and her lab’s funding and its possible dependence on gov’t grants to continue whatever work they are doing.

    i don’t know about microbiology, genetic biology, or immunology, but i have read that the dept of defense supports, for example, a huge proportion of the physics research done in this country – though that proportion is said to be declining.

    the voters on this panel are very senior researchers and managers. i doubt many of them want to acquire a reputation for being “uncooperative” with alleged “national security” needs.

    thus, an effective challenge to this action really requires outside protection for the scientists and their labs/departments,

    protection in the form, say, of presidential or congressional intervention against such covert intimidation.

    alas, the times we live in are perverse times.

    thus a dept of interior scientist (“the polar bear guy”),

    with a fine research reputation was hounded by dept of interior managers after a complaint was lodged with interior by a congresscritter (possibly a representative of seals).

    a dept of interior inspector general’s report was required to intervene, but the scientist and his work have suffered greatly.

    another very instructive example of internal governmental intimidation of a scientist was the attempted silencing of noaa scientist hansen.

  16. mzchief says:

    With respect to orionATL on December 22, 2011 at 7:44 pm:

    Perhaps folks recall “Why are outbreaks of Pfiesteria and red tides suddenly threatening our oceans?” (Scientific American, April 20, 1998). There was a NOAA scientist/marine specialist looking into the matter who refused to be silenced despite the harassment that was originating within the Fed. The scientist traced the bloom of Pfiesteria and other organisms to more than one corporation’s factory animal/animal by-product production operations and the ill-advised dumping of raw wastes in the nearby water bodies rather than proper disposal. The fish kills, animal and human toxicity was occurring because of the neurotoxins from the bloom.

    Meanwhile, Jim has written:

    But the folly of the NSABB decision goes much deeper and is just another aspect of the hysteria that has gripped the United States since the al Qaeda attack on 9/11 and the anthrax attack just a few weeks later. One aspect of this hysteria has been an attempt to make far too many things secret. Much attention has been paid to the over-classification of intelligence information, but the over-classification of scientific information is just as insidious.

    My perspective is that this latest move to more firmly subvert science and the activities of scientists in order to force a greater ignorance of the population is actually a decades-long movement with just another contemporary excuse. I see the information black-out and disinformation campaign regarding Fukushima (here is the latest I think everyone should read) as just another data point following on other similar efforts. So, I’m going to leave the reader with two food-for-thought presentations for consideration:

    Video: Deep Green Resistance – Liberal vs Radical (in 3 parts and ~22 min. total time)

    Video: “Occupy Oakland: Deep Green Resistance” (11:08 min. total time)

Comments are closed.