You may be familiar with the controversy over recent research conducted on H5N1 influenza. If you follow science news, it’s been hard to miss. Two papers, both of which report on the potential for H5N1 to become transmissible between experimental mammals, set off an international flurry over potential biosecurity concerns late last year. After months of heated meetings, contradictory recommendations from advisory groups, and more recent threats over export control laws, the fiery rhetoric seems to be finally cooling down.
The studies that started the debate, submitted by Ron Fouchier of Erasmus MS and Yoshihiro Kawaoka of UW-Madison, were flagged by the journals Science and Nature as having the potential for “Dual Use” – research that can potentially be used for both legitimate or ill intended means – and were remanded by the journals to a US governmental biosecurity advisory board called the NSABB. It’s not often that science journals find themselves in the position of contacting a governmental body for this kind of advice, and it begs the hard question of where responsibility should fall for decisions relating to whether to publish controversial papers, and under what restrictions. Particularly, what role should science publishers play? This was also new ground for the NSABB because it was created to provide advice on policies relating to dual use research as opposed to dictating the scientific content of specific manuscripts after scientific peer review. Thus, controversy was generated when the NSABB recommended for the first time to redact key methodological details and results from the two papers, which were judged to potentially enable duplication “by those who would seek to do harm”.
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