US biosecurity board reviewed

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – Implementing the US government's new program to prevent bioterrorists from seeing cutting-edge research results they could turn into weapons will be a significant challenge whose success is not assured, according to a panel of high-level officials who were involved in creating the program and who spoke at the American Society of Microbiology's (ASM) annual biodefense conference here yesterday (March 8). “It will be difficult,” said Presidential science advisor John Marburger. “We are vulnerable to bioterrorism and we are not prepared.” Marburger said there is no certainty that the new National Safety Advisory Committee on Biosecurity (NSABB) will succeed. “Nor can we prove that this will work,” he said, but “we have to do it. These are facts of life we have to deal with.”The problem is how to deal with so-called dual-use biological findings, ones that scientists could use for legitimate purposes but that bioterrorists might exploit. Making that research secret would protect it, Marburger said, but it would also restrict the communication among scientists necessary to make progress. Gerald Fink, the Whitehead Institute researcher who chaired the National Academy of Sciences committee that recommended last October that the government create a national board, said the main difference between his group's plan and the one announced is also its biggest problem. The Fink committee envisioned three levels of possible review for any proposed experiment that might potentially give away dangerous secrets. If the biosafety committees at any of 400 research institutions around the country couldn't decide whether a given experiment should be moved into a secure government lab or its results not be published, they could ask an intermediate national committee. If the middle-man committee couldn't decide, it would ask the NSABB.But under the government's plan, there would only be two levels: the institutional biosafety committees and the NSABB. The local committees would have to decide, because the NSABB will not advise on individual experiments. It will only give guidance and advice about novel issues that arise. “The critical issue is that the NSABB is not going to act on or decide on any particular experiment,” Fink said. “I predict there's going to be some confusion at the beginning,” he said, with the institutional committees needing training and not knowing what to do to decide difficult cases.To help work through those problems, the board will hire 13 full-time staffers, said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Heath's National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases. The board is expected to begin its work by early summer.Fink praised one difference between his recommendations and the actual plan: the government's decision to include all federal agencies that fund or conduct bioterrorism research in the panel's deliberations. “I think this is a striking emphasis on community rather than balkanization,” he said. Panelist Gail Cassell, a former ASM president and now a vice president at the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company, said she thinks large pharmaceutical companies will play a large role in implementing the NSABB because they are accustomed to complying with a high degree of federal regulation and taking extreme precautions.While several prominent scientists have said in the past few months that they believe only a very small minority of experiments represent any dual-use threat, MIT professor Phillip Sharp said he thinks that ultimately, the results of nearly all biological studies could be used for both good and ill.All the panelists at the meeting agreed that expanding the review of dual-use research to other countries is pivotal. “This is not a technology that is restricted to a few nations like using nuclear missiles is,” Fink said. Marburger said he had recently given a speech to Europe's Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and that the group has committed itself to working on the problem. In addition, Fink said, National Academy of Sciences president Bruce Alberts “is strongly committed to this idea” and will work with counterparts in other nations to help it succeed.

US biosecurity board reviewed

ASM bioterrorism conference speakers say putting program into place will be difficult

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of