Balancing research with national security

A new report proposes an oversight system intended to help keep biotech breakthroughs from the hands of terrorists.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. Nov. 3, 2003.

Washington -- Some poxes consistently make news -- smallpox, chicken pox, monkeypox. But the less frequently mentioned mousepox helped instigate a growing tug of war that pits national security concerns against research freedom in the biological sciences.

The mousepox incident began in Australia, far removed from Washington, D.C., where a panel of geneticists, biochemists, ethicists and national security experts gathered testimony that shaped their recently released report, "Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism: Confronting the 'Dual Use' Dilemma."

The group, assembled by the National Academy of Science's National Research Council, recommends that experiments with a high potential to be misused by bioterrorists be reviewed by fellow scientists, either before researchers begin work or before that work is published. The intention is to halt the flow of information to nefarious elements, while keeping the review process in the hands of scientists, rather than government regulators.

Care also must be taken to ensure that the nation's strong public health research effort is maintained so that safe and effective vaccines and therapeutics continue to be developed, many scientists warned.

The Australian work, which essentially aimed to build a better mousetrap, demonstrated that the findings of even the best-intentioned researchers have the potential for being subverted by evildoers.

Researchers had set out to make an infectious contraceptive for wild mice, but ended up, to their surprise, producing a particularly virulent mousepox virus capable of infecting even vaccinated mice.