Freedom of information sharing is a right we take for granted in science. And in biomedical research we felt secure about that right, until this year. This is the year everything changed.
Information sharing is the subject of a new National Academies Press publication, just out and freely available at the link: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13295 . The experts debate the best methods to share information about surveillance of imagined cases of biological threats from potential terrorists. But at the same time, a debate over a very real threat closer to home hit the presses. It was a mutant virus, the kind that enters a living cell to make many copies of itself and go on to infect other cells, and other living hosts - similar to the blue viruses popping off the brown cell in the photo.
What was the defining moment that changed our freedom to publish research results? Science journal editors and the government recognized the risks of publishing studies of the new virus. These risks outweighed any gains they could imagine. Scientists have uncovered, created, or unleashed lethal powers in the past. Like dynamite explosives and nuclear power. But the new potentially lethal threat that brought in the regulators was a form of the simple flu.
Influenza virus that causes the flu comes in many varied forms. It mutates from year to year and can change who it infects - pigs, birds, or humans. New mutant influenza viruses combine different parts of old viruses to create new lethal strains. An example is the flu pandemic of 1918 , the “mother of all pandemics“. About one third of all people living in 1918 were infected all across the globe. And an estimated 50 million people died from the new lethal strain of influenza, at a time when the world population was 1.8 billion. Did you learn about the influenza pandemic of 1918 in school? I didn’t, but my grandmother who lived through it, had a deathly fear of flu.
When researchers announced they wanted to publish how they had created a new, lethal strain of H5N1 influenza infecting small mammals - ferrets - that was contagious to other ferrets, they got a strong stop signal. Ferrets today, people tomorrow? We don’t know, and the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity doesn’t want the “wrong” people to find out, either. H5N1 is a type of influenza virus common in birds. To try and control it, people have killed hundreds of millions of birds. This virus is sometimes contagious from infected birds to people. In the 584 cases of H5N1 in people so far, 345 of the people died – usually within a few days, from the Feb 2012 tally at the World Health Organization. That is similar to the case fatality of the plague. A virus this lethal is considered a huge risk, if it becomes more contagious than it already is. Where is the new virus? So far, in the researchers hands, not in the environment.
The Advisory Board put out a short, clear explanation of the reasons they blocked parts of the new research report from publication, “Adaptations of Avian Flu Virus Are a Cause for Concern” at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/482153a.html online on January 31 2012. This is a well argued case, and states, “A pandemic, or the deliberate release of a transmissible highly pathogenic influenza A/H5N1 virus, would be an unimaginable catastrophe for which the world is currently inadequately prepared.”
And so the time has come to regulate biomedical research reporting. Physicists who work with atomic power, and molecular biologists who create recombinant DNA are used to regulations. Now biologists who work with infectious diseases must also consider the effect their creations can have on all of creation. The new rules will come from the government, from scientists, and from us the public over the coming months. Please comment, here, elsewhere, it’s a decision that we can all be involved in now.
Photo credit: Image from Wellcome Images http://cellimagelibrary.org/images/39465
This should definitely be regulated! It scares me to think scientists are off creating new diseases. What is the rationale behind that?
The researcher’s idea was to beat nature in the game of creating new viruses, in order for research to create the cure before the next new disease appears. It is unclear whether this is realistic. They did create a new disease for ferrets. Not much news on a cure. Other researchers have spoken out saying the idea wouldn’t work. Nature has almost infinite variety, while the researchers created 2 varieties. And even for those it is unclear if we could create a cure.
Thanks J.J. Brown for the interesting article. Often mutated viruses come from pigs, chickens and other animals and birds but the human population is also a reservoir for mutating viruses. Aids is a good example. Now with the human population of seven billion that is one big reservoir.
On any given year somewhere between a quarter to a half million people in the world die of the flu while the memories of the 1918 pandemic have faded. I think it is important to do research into how these viruses can mutate to see what external virus features vaccines can prep your immune system to attack. I feel that computer modeling of the virus has a much better chance of answering that question. The question to ask the model is, “Are there external features that are in common with most of these virus models that can be attacked with a multiple target immune response?” Generating millions of different flu virus models is something that is near impossible using wet science but can be done with molecular modeling on a super computer. All you need is a team of dedicated scientists and programmers and this can probably be done in less time than creating just a few viruses, tinkering around with RNA in the lab. A lot less dangerous too and there’s a good chance the cure comes with the model.
Also, don’t publish the model until you have the cure. Even then, the modeling system can be adapted to other viruses so maybe the use of such models should be entrusted to only a few.
Computer modeling seems like a much safer way to go, especially if you don’t publish the model until you have the cure. Thanks for sharing your insights here.
Pingback: Secrets in Science and Public Funded Research « Science rEvolution
Pingback: No It’s Not Greek or Latin, it’s Healthcare « Science rEvolution
Pingback: Review – American Dream | welcome to my place
Pingback: The Next Big Thing | welcome to my place