Risky Science: Is Anybody Watching The Experimental AIDS Mouse?

When research is mobilized around combating a virulent infectious agent, risk-taking is inevitable. That has been true in the pursuit of a polio vaccine and a cure for smallpox, in the study of cancer-causing viruses, and most recently, in AIDS research. While the responsible course of action is to limit as much as possible the risks to investigators and laboratory technicians, those goals can only be accomplished within certain limits. Infectious organisms are opportunistic, always seeking new hosts and hew pathways to old hosts. Even under the highest biological containment conditions, laboratory workers have been infected with their experimental agents. While the risks of working with laboratory pathogens cannot be eliminated, strict guidelines, health monitoring, improved facilities, and constant vigilance have proven effective in reducing the incidence of laboratory infections. Beyond the risk of laboratory induced infections, working with some organisms poses a risk that the agents will be released into the environment, possibly in new forms or through new routes of infection. Thus, there are ethical questions raised when experimenting with highly infectious and virulent agents. Is it appropriate to carry out experiments that may increase the host range of disease-inducing organisms, especially those for which there is no known treatment? If the answer is always negative, then important lines of inquiry will be closed off that could lead to the discovery of a cure On the other hand, if the answer is always positive, then there may be significant risks of increasing the incidence of the disease even with scientifically credible experiments. Scientists have no fundamental right to engage in research that could release new pathogens or increase the host range of existing ones. Those who are engaged in publicly supported research are in a contractual relationship with society. They are not involved in the performance of a personal act. While the benefits of their discoveries ‘contribute to a pool of knowledge that eventually may help eradicate dread diseases, scientists have a responsibility not to create more harm than benefit in the pursuit of their work. What then is the answer? Do we let a small group of experts decide which experiments are worth the risk? Who are these experts? Are they those scientists in hot pursuit of the cure? Can they render a fair judgment that balances the risks of extending the range of a disease with the benefits of a research strategy? Late last year, the press reported on an unusual experiment that had been performed at the National Institutes of Health. The genome of the AIDS virus was inserted by microinjection into the fertilized egg of a mouse. The egg was then implanted into the mouse’s womb and brought to term. Thus, in principle, there now exists a mouse that possesses the genome of the AIDS virus in every cell of its body, making it the first such mammal of this nature. Scientists performed this experiment to create a model system that would reveal much needed knowledge about the production of AIDS virus in vivo. The experiment was carried out in the highest-security containment facility, one that is reminiscent of the Fort Detrick laboratories that handle biological warfare agents. Yet it is easy to imagine many awful scenarios of AIDS mice escaping the facility. According to what standards and what review process should such an experiment be evaluated? In the case of the AIDS mouse, the decision was not made in the sunshine. Had it been a recombinant DNA experiment, it would have been placed under review by NIH’s Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC) and opened to broad public and scientific comment. As it happened, only private discussions took place among investigators and some members of the RAC. The public and the great majority of molecular biologists and epidemiologists learned about the experiment from the press. Are the risks of the experiment worth the benefit? I certainly cannot say. But when sensitive experiments are contemplated, it makes sense to hear from as broad a membership of the scientific community and the public as possible. Only in this way can the social contract between science and society be realized, since science is accountable to the public on questions of potentially hazardous research. The AIDS virus is a scourge to the world population. Combatting it requires dedicated investigators willing to take personal risks. Some of these pursuits may involve increasing the spread of the disease. Each nation should have an ethics committee that reviews high-risk experiments and makes a determination on behalf of the public of whether the knowledge to be gained is worth the risk of increasing the spread of the agent. Such a committee can measure the pulse of the biomedical and infectious disease communities. It can ask whether there are alternative approaches to the problem that might be safer. It can set the guidelines for risky experiments. It can inform the media and the public in a timely fashion on the conditions and justification for the experiments. The world’s biomedical research community must pursue the prevention and cure for AIDS with every resource at its disposal. But this must be accomplished without unnecessarily increasing the risks of further spread and in accordance with the principle of open discussion. An associate professor of Urban and Environmental Policy at Tufts University, Sheldon Krimsky served on the NIH Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee and is the author of Genetic Alchemy: The Social History of the Recombinant DNA Controversy (MIT Press, 1982).

Risky Science: Is Anybody Watching The Experimental AIDS Mouse?

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