In an unprecedented move, a federal advisory panel recommended on Tuesday that university scientists and journals delete information from two unpublished papers that describe how the bird-flu virus could be engineered to infect mammals by passing it through the air. The panel worried that the changed virus—if the experiments were repeated in an unsecured laboratory or, worse, by a terrorist—could infect people and create a pandemic.
The two projects—one led by Ron Fouchier, a virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center, in the Netherlands, and the other led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison—have been causing a great deal of concern ever since Mr. Fouchier presented details of his work this fall at a conference, because flu viruses can spread extremely rapidly.
“Compared to plague or to anthrax, this one has a potential for disaster that dwarfs all others,” said D.A. Henderson, a distinguished scholar at the Center for Biosecurity of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. In the wake of the World Trade Center bombings and the anthrax letter attacks of 2001, Mr. Henderson served as director of the federal Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness and advised the White House on biosecurity.
“Given our flu-vaccine capacity, which is limited, this could be a catastrophe if it gets out,” said Mr. Henderson, who is not a member of the panel behind Tuesday’s recommendations.
The panel, called the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, has no regulatory authority but renders advice to the National Institutes of Health and other agencies. It has been evaluating the papers since before Thanksgiving. In a public statement, the panel said that “conclusions of the manuscripts should be published but without experimental details and mutation data that would enable replication of the experiments.”
The H5N1 avian-flu virus in nature infects birds but does not spread easily from person to person. Mr. Fouchier said that scientists had assumed that pattern would always be the case, but his work shows that this is not a safe assumption and that it would be wise to prepare for a pandemic. He and Mr. Kawaoka obtained mammal-to-mammal transmission through the air by repeatedly passing a natural strain of the virus among ferrets, and learned that only a few genetic mutations were needed for the virus to make the mammal jumps.
Since it was chartered, in 2005, the biosecurity board has tried to balance security concerns against the need for scientists to see this kind of information, use it to watch for dangerous changes in a pathogen, and prepare countermeasures such as vaccines.
Bruce Alberts, editor in chief of the journal Science, which is considering Mr. Fouchier’s manuscript for publication, echoed that dilemma. “The NSABB has emphasized the need to prevent the details of this research from falling into the wrong hands,” he said in a statement on Tuesday. But, he added, “Science has concerns about withholding potentially important public-health information from responsible influenza researchers.” The journal is considering how to proceed, he continued, and would like to see the federal government develop a plan to ensure that any omitted data would be provided to legitimate scientists who requested it.
Mr. Kawaoka has not been commenting publicly. But a spokesman for the University of Wisconsin, Terry Devitt, said that “we respect the recommendations and will work with the journal that is considering publication.” That journal is Nature, which issued a statement on Tuesday similar to Mr. Alberts’s. Mr. Devitt added that “our feeling is this is important research and we don’t think there is much new in the way of methodology.”
Indeed, the ferret-to-ferret method is well known, and some details of the genetic changes became available after Mr. Fouchier described his work at the meeting this fall.
That is one reason members of the biosecurity board have advocated that scientists regulate themselves, hold back on projects that pose serious security risks at conception or while conducting the work, and not wait until a manuscript is completed.
“This should all be done before you start the work,” said Lynn W. Enquist, a professor of molecular biology at Princeton University. As editor of the Journal of Virology, he sees many papers on pathogens that have the potential for risks as well as benefits. “Just think: What are the consequences?” he said.