Recently, avian influenza has returned to public attention, by coincidence appearing at the same time in three different settings: a Hong Kong poultry market; a Shenzhen bus driver; and laboratories in the Wisconsin and the Netherlands. Though the timing of the events was coincidental, it made clear that 'avian influenza' is a viral object literally cultured by human labors, in the market or the petri dish. It also raised important questions about how these human labors contribute to increasing danger, security or preparedness.

On December 21, the New York Times reported that the National Security Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) had asked the journals Science and Nature to redact certain portions of journal articles that reported the findings of experiments conducted in Wisconsin and the Netherlands. These experiments “evolved” the H5N1 influenza virus in the laboratory, then injected them into ferret assays and measured the rates of transmission between the ferrets (see Carlo Caduff's dissertation for detailed anthropological critique of the ferret assay). They claimed to succeed in developing laboratory strains that were far more transmissible than the H5N1 currently 'at large'. This is significant because human-to-human transmissible--while perhaps occurring in isolated cases--remains low for H5N1, which thus far prevents the virus from becoming a pandemic.

A number of scientists subsequently complained about the NSABB's “request”, describing it as censorship. Yet it would be wrong to reduce their argument to a simple defense of “freedom” and the citadel of scientific inquiry. Rather, their questions cut to the core of the kinds of governance that are legitimate and effective for dealing with complex biological threats like avian influenza and advanced molecular biology.

Richard Ebright, of Rutgers University, argued: "The proposed redactions are nothing more than a public relations measure – window dressing – intended to convey the impression that the issue is being addressed and thereby to minimize negative public reaction and deflect calls for effective regulation,"

Wendy Barclay, of Imperial College London, pointed to the difficulty of calculating the costs and benefits of preventing publication of the research. "I am not convinced that withholding scientific know-how will prevent the highly unlikely scenario of misuse of information, but I am worried that it may stunt our progress towards the improved control of this infectious disease," she said.

ARC has previously written about the NSABB and its governance of biological research in this green paper. In this paper, we argued that the NSABB accurately identified contemporary biological research as posing problems of “low probability, high consequence”-- for example, the risk of a bioterrorist attack cannot be easily calculated in probabilistic terms, yet the occurrence of even a single one would carry high political, vital and economic consequences. Paradoxically, NSABB operates in a mode that attempts to minimize risks, a strategy of regulation we argued is intrinsically ineffective for governing the kinds of situations NSABB tasks itself with. We argued that NSABB employs a strategy of security or regulation for a situation that demands a strategy of preparedness.

A particularly ridiculous clause of the NSABB's request involved negotiating with the journals "to agree on a procedure whereby edited versions of the papers are published, but bona fide researchers can gain access to the crucial methods and other details that have been removed."  Bone fide researchers?  Doesn't anybody remember that the anthrax mailings were most likely done by a top-level security clearance insider? It is frightening to me the way that evil is consistently pushed to the outsider: it is always the imagined guy with a makeshift lab in some foreign mountain cave, not the white-collar American Nobel prize winner.

And because of this, I am not willing to let the scientists completely off the hook, either. The scientists describe this research as necessary for improving our ability to control the virus. But precisely a major difficulty--that should not be glossed over-- is the disconnect between making knowledge and the actual control of the virus. As Anthony S. wrote to me in an e-mail, does it make sense to talk about “control” when we are talking about influenza? A lot of scientists mentioned the need to develop a vaccine for the virus. But vaccines for a specific virus can be easily produced; the problem has always been knowing which viral strain is going to cause the pandemic. What the scientists are talking about, actually, is ongoing research on a 'universal' influenza vaccine. Such a vaccine may indeed be one element of a preparedness strategy. But there remain few ideas about how one would actually undertake a program to control the spread of influenza even with such a vaccine, as production, distribution and implementation are difficulties that cannot be solved through work in the laboratory.