US asks journals not to publish flu virus research to keep info from terrorists

http://www.cnbc.com/id/45749145

by dctoedt • 15 years ago

23 30 15 years ago

CWuestefeld3• 15 years ago

This seems like a bad idea. At the same time we're (hopefully!) keeping the information away from the bad guys, we're also handicapping those who could be building us protection from it.

the journal was taking the recommendations seriously and would probably withhold some information — but only if the government creates a system to provide the missing information to legitimate scientists worldwide who need it.

I'm concerned with how they might determine who is "legitimate", and who "needs it".

And beyond that, it seems silly to try to protect in this way. I've got to believe that anyone skilled enough to be able to use the information would also be skilled enough to get himself onto the staff of a "legitimate" researcher, thereby getting the information.

hackinthebochs3• 15 years ago

>This seems like a bad idea. At the same time we're (hopefully!) keeping the information away from the bad guys, we're also handicapping those who could be building us protection from it.

The concern is that it is much much easier for those who would cause harm to use this information than for those who would use it to create defenses. With such an asymmetry it makes sense to restrict access.

>I've got to believe that anyone skilled enough to be able to use the information

From what I've gathered from various articles is that the process described doesn't require any high level skills or facilities. Apparently it's frighteningly easy to nudge bird flu to be highly contagious in humans.

angelbob2• 15 years ago

Only if the numbers are fairly comparable. If the number of "good" scientists looking to defend is much larger than the number of bad scientists, you're still probably better off publishing.

code_duck• 15 years ago

How is this different than a technology company asking security researchers to not publish a 0 day exploit? Responsible disclosure makes sense in biology, too.

pragmatic2• 15 years ago

You assume of course that this research leads to a vaccine that's 100% effective and distributed to the entire population of the planet.

You miss the point that some people can't have the flu vaccine because of auto immune disease susceptibility. Also X percent of the population will not get the vaccination for other reasons.

So this is more like [Sophos|Symantec|Kaspersky] creating a super Windows virus then offering to print the source code in order to "further" research.

Just like with nuclear technology, we can't put this genie back in the bottle.

Just because we can do something, does that always mean we should?

ufo• 15 years ago

The difference is that in the biological case the virus comes up by itself without the need for too much human intervention or 'source code". We already know that more then one group already managed to come up with a killer strain by (basically) just exposing the virus to ferrets in a cage.

A malicious virologist already knows enough to try to replicate the experiment in his own secret lab so censoring the information will just make it hard for the good researchers to do their job.

CWuestefeld3• 15 years ago

You assume of course that this research leads to a vaccine that's 100% effective and distributed to the entire population of the planet.

No, this is not correct. As I explained elsewhere in the thread where you made the same claim:

A vaccine can effectively stop a virus with far fewer than 100% actually receiving the vaccination.

First, depending on the type of vaccine, the immunity may be communicated to other people through contact. Other people in the household, work, school, etc. are contaminated with the attenuated virus (in such a vaccination, as with the Salk polio virus).

Second, with a sufficient portion of the population immune, they act as firebreaks interfering with the transmission of the virus through the population. This is called "Herd Immunity" [1]. According to the linked article, for example, smallpox is effectively stopped with 83%-85% of the community vaccinated.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

jarin2• 15 years ago

I think the problem in this case, when you're talking about adding airborne transmission to a virus with a 50%+ mortality rate is that the risk of someone causing a pandemic is MUCH higher than the odds that they will find an effective vaccine/cure in time to prevent it.

remyroy• 15 years ago

Let's start a war on information because war is peace and information is the cause for thoughtcrime.

Orwell's timing was wrong but close enough in my book.

andar• 15 years ago

To me, it's as if 1984 were the past few decades' events and attitudes condensed into a few weeks.

redthrowaway2• 15 years ago

If terrorists have the ability to bioengineer and deliver viruses, then I'm thinking published research is the least of our worries. It would be like keeping information on how to increase the yield of a thermonuclear warhead from 5MT to 10MT secret: if that's a concern, we're already hooped.

jarin2• 15 years ago

I don't know if there's a name for it, but this is kind of like "security by obscurity". I'm not sure I would just make the assumption that there's no possible way a terrorist group can engineer a virus capable of killing half the world's population and call it good. For example, it's entirely possible that the terrorist organization could kidnap researchers and force them to do it.

redthrowaway2• 15 years ago

If kidnapping researchers and forcing them to do it is an issue, why wouldn't they just kidnap the people who did this study?

We aren't talking about a bond villain, here. We're talking about largely uneducated Arab peasants who are perfectly capable of firing an RPG-7 or an AK-47, or strapping on an explosive vest and blowing themselves up, but little else. There's no evidence they're even making their own PETN, which is far easier than engineering a virus. In fact, instructions for the manufacture of PETN, and the constituent components thereof, are freely available.

The rush to ascribe fantastical abilities to terrorists has led to the introduction of some pretty draconian laws. Given that bathtubs kill more Americans than do terrorists, let's lay of the doomsdaying, shall we?

pygy_• 15 years ago

Even though the mutations required to get a h5n1 virus contagious between humans haven't been published, the process to generate them has been, and it is trivial to duplicate.

H5N1 in the hands of "bad" people is a matter of weeks or perhaps months (provided they have ferrets and the aviary strain of h5n1).

hackinthebochs3• 15 years ago

I don't see the problem here. Information, just like everything else, can be used as a weapon. Some information needs to be kept out of the hands of people who aren't responsible enough to use it. This is standard practice with other things.

The knee-jerk reactions against "censorship" in this case doesn't make sense. From what I've gathered from other articles about this research is that it basically lays out a procedure to take bird flu and turn it into a potential pandemic-causing virus. And we're not talking highly controlled lab experiments here, this is something that a rag-tag group could do in a regular building (again, from what I've inferred).

The potential downside to having this information freely available far outweighs the benefits. Any legitimate research group will surely be able to get their hands on the information.

billpatrianakos• 15 years ago

The idea that you'd need to keep this information from terrorists is laughable. They want you to picture highly trained and organized militia type groups who are actually competent enough to pull off any sort of attack.

Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with terrorists. This is all about trying to keep this information under wraps so they can be the ones who make it a biological weapon that they can hold over the heads of any country who they perceive as threatening.

Terrorist organizations for the most part aren't half as fearsome as the US government want you to believe. Their more akin to street gangs than the organized, resourceful group they want you to imagine. And in the rare case that a terrorist group is capable of weaponizing the flu, some law enforcement agency will most likely have the jump on them before they can execute.

I'm not saying it can't happen, I'm just saying the chances are slim and, more importantly, their reason for pushing secrecy is most likely not the true reason.

zotz• 15 years ago

> Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with terrorists.

Anytime some government agency does something for our own good or "for the kids", run for your lives.

ig12• 15 years ago

What precisely stops a member of a legitimate research group also being a terrorist ?

Or a rogue government which probably has the ability to reproduce to the research relatively easily from doing so and providing the information to a terrorist group.

If someone wanted to commit an act of viral terrorism they would have done so by now, there are already plenty of dangerous viruses and hybrids in research labs all around the world, most of which have close to zero security.

I think the biggest thing that protects us again viral terrorism is that terrorists aren't crazy enough to use any kind of untargeted weapon.

Probably the most famous act of terrorism in british history - the gunpowder plot of 1605 was stopped because one of the conspirators tipped of a member of their family.

Terrorists don't want to do something that could well kill the supporters of their own cause or their families.

teyc• 15 years ago

Cultish doomsday people may. Don't forget where the idea of drinking the koolaid come from.

Florin_Andrei2• 15 years ago

> Terrorists don't want to do something that could well kill the supporters of their own cause or their families.

That's right.

Insane people, OTOH, have no such restraints. That's what worries me more than any "terrorist" attack. I think we're paying too much attention to "terrorism", blinded as we are by the glare of media. But it's getting more and more easy for some doomsday cultist, sane enough to be able to perform basic engineering tasks, but insane enough to dream of a DIY Armageddon, to make those dreams (or, rather, nightmares) come true.

Even so, I'm still not sure whether withholding information is always good policy. Maybe it is - maybe a slight delay until defenses are built might be beneficial.

ig12• 15 years ago

The odds of a crazy person unleashing a deadly virus upon the world are probably relatively low maybe 1 in a million.

The odds of a random mutation unleashing deadly virus upon the world are probably close to 1.

It's amazing how quickly people have forgotten about the 1918 flu epidemic. It killed around 75 million people and infected more than a quarter of the world's population.

We're going to have another virus epidemic of that proportion, it's a question of when rather than if. We should be building defences because of the risk of random mutations and not because of the risk of engineered viruses.

angelbob2• 15 years ago

"I wouldn’t call this censorship," Dr. Alberts said. "This is trying to avoid inappropriate censorship."

Wow. So he thinks that if they don't self-censor, the government will censor for them... And that that makes it not censorship?

Ouch.

brudgers• 15 years ago

The cynic in me is unconvinced that this is not a in part motivated by some portion of the US government wanting to keep its edge in regard to bioweaponry rather than a general concern about weaponization.

As others note, if they have the virus and the labs to weaponize it, they are probably a government.

jballanc• 15 years ago

Funding to biomedical research in the US has been essentially flat since 2001. First, it was a downturn in the economy. Then, it was largely driven by a president who questioned evolution and an administration that was outright hostile toward science. Then, it was a downturn in the economy and a rising national debt.

Refusing to increase funding to biomedical research is a side-long way to slowly kill scientific progress in America. This, on the other hand, is irrational fear leading directly to the stifling of science in America.

I think it's fairly clear now, if it wasn't before, that America has lost its lead in scientific progress. I wonder how most Americans will feel when they finally realize that some other country is more technically advanced? Will the added sense of "safety" have been worth it?

simonsarris• 15 years ago

I took a class in college on Bioterrorism. (Literally, the class was just named "Bioterrorism")

The U.S. used to be big into researching biological weapons until they found that it was far too easy and cheap to build them compared to other weapons of mass destruction (such as nuclear weapons).

Therefore they nearly stopped all biological weapon research merely because it would be too easy for poorer countries (or terrorists) to make those types of weapons.

That approach was very reasonable: It is in the United State's best interest if the only weapons of mass destruction are very expensive to make. I imagine at least some of the reasoning here is a carryover of this. So I highly doubt when they say:

> For the first time ever, a government advisory board is asking scientific journals not to publish details of certain biomedical experiments, for fear ...

That this is the first time. This is just probably a much more visible (and perhaps more ridiculous than usual) example.

moheeb• 15 years ago

Isn't this like the evening news not giving the recipe for meth away every night?

Nobody really complains about that.

US asks journals not to publish flu virus research to keep info from terrorists

Related Stories