Security Fears Put Scientists Under Scrutiny

Michael Goldberg expected to hear from the FBI because he knew the agency wanted "The List." So the phone call from federal investigators to the American Society of Microbiology in Washington, DC, requesting the names and addresses of 43,000 members came as no surprise. Goldberg, the society's executive director, received a letter citing the names of two agents who would come to the ASM office. The letter says it "reaffirms ... that all membership information disclosed by ASM will be used for official purposes and is not subject to [public] disclosure." The organization happily complied with the FBI. But the official scrutiny fuels a growing uneasiness among some US life scientists. Once touted as the leaders of the country's next economic miracle—a burgeoning biotechnology sector—they increasingly feel themselves the targets of paranoia and misunderstanding. The controversy over cloning and stem cell research had already created a rift between biologists and policymakers. The investigation into anthrax-tainted mail that prompted the FBI's inquiry about the ASM membership has only heightened some biologists' worries that the federal government now views them with distrust. "Science has gone from a very mildly regulated industry to one of the most regulated," says Sharon Krag, associate dean for graduate education and research at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. "This was an issue before Sept. 11 and anthrax. But those events have made things more acute." A Changing View of Scientists A provision in the Bioterrorism Preparedness Act, which the US Senate passed Dec. 20, also signals Washington's changed attitude toward researchers. The law, which is expected to pass once the House adds its own wording, would allow the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish new security restrictions for people possessing or transferring biological agents and toxins. Lawmakers also may codify new limitations on information exchange that have a significant impact on sharing and releasing information. Courtesy of Rush HoltRep. Rush Holt Krag cheerfully acknowledges that the public has a right to know that research is done properly and safely, since it often pays the bill. Each regulation by itself makes sense, she adds. But she frets that the composite effect snuffs out creativity because principal investigators may be so busy dealing with paperwork they won't have time to do their research. Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) cautions against overreacting to Congress's new concerns over bioterrorism. "It's an overstatement to say science is one of the most heavily regulated industries, but its openness has definitely been compromised," he says. "The exchange of ideas also involves the exchange of people. That's been constrained by a fear of pathogens that has caused people to put restrictions, or proposed ones, on bioscience and microbiologists." Mining for Information The ASM visit by the FBI is only the beginning. An FBI spokesman, citing "the ongoing [anthrax] investigation" refused to confirm or deny the agency had asked for The List, never mind saying it had gotten it, why it wanted it, or what it planned to do with the information in it. But it doesn't require many brain cells to deduce the investigators hoped mining the institutional memory would lead them to potential perpetrators. Like other surfers, FBI agents could search ASM's home page (www.asm.org) for the publicly available information. But finding what they want to know means knowing whom they want to find. Say the agents want to know everything about the ASM's president. Unless they had enough information to enter "Abigail Salyers" in the name boxes, they'd be running on empty. So plumbing 43,000 names for "a researcher at university XYZ" would be a Herculean chore, even for the agency's star number crunchers. And the end of the line won't reveal any state secrets. Salyers' entry, for example, lists: name; campus address; work phone; E-mail address; degree; ASM membership status; division; primary employer and primary job activity. Those practitioners aren't the only ones in trouble, though. Many scientists think the discipline never has been this threatened. Concern over the increased hostility in Congress and proposals for improving the atmosphere dominated this year's first of three meetings of the 300 faculty, university research administrators, and federal agency funding officials comprising the Federal Demonstration Partnership, which Krag thinks is most likely to address the distress. But forget about solving the problem fast. "Our situation is going to get worse before it gets better because there's no organized response," Krag says. "It's a nationwide problem." Holt defends congressional decisions, saying that despite changes in laws and furor over stem cells, researchers still have friends in the Capitol. "You can't say it's going to get worse before it gets better," Holt says. "A number of us are working hard to make sure the openness required for scientists to do good science is retained." He and his colleagues may have to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt to assuage the fears of University of Illinois microbiologist Brenda Wilson and her colleagues who think science doesn't play well on Capitol Hill. "If more people in Congress understood science and scientists, there wouldn't have been such a knee-jerk reaction to the anthrax situation," Wilson says. "What frightens scientists most is that we're being threatened by people making decisions who don't know what we do, how we do it, or why we do it." Willie Schatz (willie@his.com) is a freelance writer in Washington, DC.

Security Fears Put Scientists Under Scrutiny

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