Download: MP3 Audio
SUMMARY AND BACKGROUND
"This is ripe for people in the field of public health. This field, biodefense, needs you. It really needs your input. It needs professionals who understand public health." 2
- Jeanne Guillemin
"What’s the way ahead? My sense is that education, consensus, norms, sort of behavioral responses will be more useful…than will be regulatory schemes." 3
- David R. Franz
"Transparency and openness is the best constraint we have on illegitimate or people intending to do harm." 9
- Barry R. Bloom
"The two aspects that are most compelling to me are first the need to regroup about the pandemic threat of H5N1…And the second is to really be very cautious in allowing the dissemination of these viruses or other viruses like them to more than a limited number of labs." 10
- Marc Lipsitch
Amid controversy, a cadre of experts are expected to meet in February at the World Health Organization to debate the publication of experiments that made a deadly form of bird flu more contagious in mammals in an effort to understand mechanisms of its evolution. Worries that the data and research could lead to a blueprint for a bioweapon or an accidental pandemic have fueled concerns. Recently, a federal advisory board recommended that some details of the research not be made public. In January, the scientists who conducted the as-yet-unpublished experiments announced in the journals Science and Nature their decision to "pause" research involving the viruses for 60 days. Other experts have asserted that the risks have been exaggerated. This Forum event, presented in collaboration with Reuters, examined questions raised by the publication of possibly dangerous information and the security issues faced by labs legitimately working with this virus. This event was part of the Andelot Series on Current Science Controversies.
Background
- Pause on avian flu transmission studies
- Nature
- Pause on Avian Flu Transmission Research
- Science
- POLICY: ADAPTATIONS OF AVIAN FLU VIRUS ARE A CAUSE FOR CONCERN
- Nature
- PUBLIC HEALTH, BIOSECURITY, AND H5N1
- Science
- NIH STATEMENT ON H5N1, JANUARY 20, 2012
- National Institutes of Health
- FACING UP TO FLU: THE POTENTIAL FOR MUTANT-FLU RESEARCH TO IMPROVE PUBLIC HEALTH ANY TIME SOON HAS BEEN EXAGGERATED. TIMELY PRODUCTION OF SUFFICIENT VACCINE REMAINS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE.
- Nature
- U.S. PANEL DEFENDS CALL TO CENSOR BIRD FLU STUDIES
- Reuters
- PANEL EXPLAINS DECISION TO LIMIT PUBLICATION OF BIRD FLU RESEARCH
- Los Angeles Times
- THE NEW YORK TIMES AVIAN FLU HEALTH GUIDE
- The New York Times
Photo © Cynthia Goldsmith/CDC.
WEB EDITOR
COMMENT RECEIVED FROM GRACE WYSHAK
Associate Professor in the Departments of Biostatistics and Global Health and Population, Harvard School of Public Health
If you look at the history of science, nearly every new idea is seen as a bad idea. Even recently with stem cells, the initial reaction was "no, you can't do stem cells," but now research is making progress. With the appropriate precautions, bird flu research should continue and be shared among scientists for the public good it may bring us through prevention strategies. It's important to recognize that scientific progress, from Galileo and even farther back, started out with people calling the work nonsense or dangerous.
FORUM WEB EDITOR
EMAIL RECEIVED FROM ONLINE AUDIENCE MEMBER
Given the fact that the transmissible H5N1 study was done in ferrets, what is the consensus on how accurate of a model ferrets are for studying both pathogenesis and transmissibility of H5N1 in humans?
Ravi Raju, PhD student, Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard School of Public Health
FORUM WEB EDITOR
EMAIL RECEIVED FROM ONLINE AUDIENCE MEMBER
What do you think about the effectiveness of poultry vaccination?
Edward Goldstein, Senior Research Scientist, HSPH Department of Epidemiology
FORUM WEB EDITOR
EMAIL RECEIVED FROM ONLINE AUDIENCE MEMBER
At present, definitions of a pandemic are based on transmission, without taking account of the severity of disease. As a result many members of the public had difficulty accepting the 2009 H1N1 pandemic as anything of the kind, even though it was plainly a pandemic in terms of transmission and global spread. Should measures of severity such as case fatality rate be introduced into the definition of a pandemic? And if so, how severe does something have to be?
Bill Hanage, Associate Professor of Epidemiology, HSPH
FORUM WEB EDITOR
EMAILS RECEIVED FROM ONLINE AUDIENCE MEMBER
Question #1.
To the panelists: what do they said to the study sections and panels at the funding bodies who would have reviewed these research proposals many years in advance to the publication of these results? Do they believe that the funding bodies should have had some stipulation about making this work public?
Question #2
From an almost selfish point of view, do the panelists believe that suppressing this work will negatively impact the career of the researchers, particularly those early in their careers?
Iain MacLeod, Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard School of Public Health