美国要求科学家对禽流病毒研究细节保密 

350人死于H5N1病毒 

 美国政府要求两份知名科学期刊——《科学》与《自然》不要透露科学家如何在实验室制造出致命禽流感病毒H5N1的相关细节，理由是担心被别人利用制造生物武器。 

《科学》与《自然》期刊准备发表荷兰一家实验室制造出H5N1病毒的详细研究报告。 美国政府的一个委员会说，担心研究报告可能被用来协助制造生物武器。 
             H5N1病毒可以致命，到目前为止有350人被确认死于这种病毒。

来源： 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/federal-panel-asks-science-journals-to-censor-reports-on-how-to-make-a-deadlier-bird-flu/2011/12/20/gIQASztM7O_story.html

Federal panel asks journals to censor reports of lab-created ‘bird flu’

Kin Cheung/AP - In this December 2008 file photo, health workers slaughter all the chickens at the wholesale poultry market in Hong Kong after three dead chickens tested positive for bird flu. The U.S. government asked scientists Dec. 20, 2011, not to reveal all the details of how to make a version of the deadly bird flu that they created in labs in the U.S. and Europe.

Scientists seeking to fight future pandemics have created a variety of “bird flu” potentially so dangerous that a federal advisory panel has for the first time asked two science journals to hold back on publishing details of research.

In the experiments, university-based scientists in the Netherlands and Wisconsin created a version of the so-called H5N1 influenza virus that is highly lethal and easily transmissible between ferrets, the lab animals that most closely mirror human beings in flu research.

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Members of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, which was created after the anthrax bioterrorism attacks of 2001, worried that such a hazardous strain might be intentionally or accidentally released into the world if directions for making it were generally known.

After weeks of reviewing papers describing the research, the NSABB said Tuesday it had recommended that the experiments’ “general conclusions” be published but not “details that could enable replication of the experiments by those who would seek to do harm.”

“Censorship is considered the ultimate sin of original research. However, we also have an imperative to keep certain research out of the hands of individuals who could use it for nefarious purposes,” said Michael T. Osterholm, a member of the board who is also director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “It is not unexpected that these two things would clash in this very special situation.”

The board cannot stop publication. Its advice went to the Department of Health and Human Services, whose leaders asked the authors of the papers and the journals reviewing them — Science, published in Washington, and Nature, published in London — to comply.

The journals’ responses to the request were chilly, although both hinted they were willing to go along under certain conditions. Dutch researchers said they “are currently working on a new manuscript that complies with the recommendation.” The scientists at the University of Wisconsin could not be reached.

The work was paid for by the National Institutes of Health as part of a large portfolio of research aimed at “pandemic preparedness.”

The recommendation from the board puts the federal government in a distinctly controversial and embarrassing position.

It calls for a limit on the free exchange of information — something viewed as anathema by most scientists. It also suggests there wasn’t sufficient forethought about what might happen if the experiments actually worked.

“I hope that in the future we consider the consequences of these experiments long before we get to the publication phase,” said Paul S. Keim, a prominent microbiologist at Northern Arizona who chairs the NSABB.

The board, which has 23 voting members who are academic scientists and public health officials and 18 nonvoting government officials, reached the decision unanimously, Keim said. “The feeling was we need time for a broad, global discussion of the issues in this area,” he said.