Reflections - scientists and research under test / Bracha Reger

The US government opposes research on especially violent strains of the flu. Is this the right move?

In September 2014, US President Barack Obama published new instructions whose purpose was to strengthen the control of research dealing with imparting new properties to pathogens that pose a danger to public health and with the help of which it will be possible to develop biological weapons. These instructions transfer the responsibility for experiments of this type from the institutions that commission the studies, i.e. the US government, to the researchers and the institutions where they work. In October 2014, the American government published even stricter instructions, the main of which is the cessation of funding for research aimed at creating particularly violent pathogens capable of causing global epidemics. This is about stopping funding exclusively for research into influenza, SARS and MERS viruses funded by the American Institutes of Health (NIH).

The US government will stop supporting research that creates more virulent strains of viruses, such as the H1N1 influenza virus shown in the illustration.

The reason for the strict instructions was a concern that arose regarding the security and safety of these experiments and the inherent dangers to public safety. The purpose of stopping the funding was to allow a re-evaluation of the benefits of these experiments compared to the risks inherent in them.
The snowball began to roll due to experiments with the bird flu virus conducted by researchers Ron Foschier from the Netherlands and Yoshihiro Kawaoka from the USA. Although the goal of their research was to develop weakened strains of the bird flu virus to be suitable for use as a vaccine, the result did not always match the intentions. Indeed, instead of creating a weakened strain, the two laboratories created, using different methods, more violent strains of the bird flu virus. The researchers were asked to stop their research and while Ron Foschier announced the end of his research, Kawaka continued his research and a few months ago published a follow-up article. According to him, the importance of his research is that he seeks to learn how the virus behaves and what are the mechanisms that cause the violent mutations. He claims that this is the way to prepare for an outbreak of a more violent virus in the population, an outbreak that will, naturally, come sooner or later.
These studies, and the public uproar that arose as a result of them, led to the publication of the American instructions in September 2014. And as if that were not enough, close to the publication of the new laws in September, dangerous pathogens such as smallpox and anthrax viruses were found in refrigerators, in various laboratories of the American health institutes. These cases raised the level of concern about biological terrorism and the danger to public health. This turn of events led to the publication of the new instructions in October announcing the end of the funding of the studies.
The responses were not long in coming. Government officials and some scientists justified the halting of studies that have a high level of risk until there are procedures regulating their execution. In contrast, other scientists, and especially the organizations "Science for Scientists" and the "Cambridge Research Group", came out against the termination of the research. Both organizations admit that the presence of forgotten test tubes in refrigerators in laboratories is quite common and therefore it is important to strengthen the control processes. On the other hand, the level of risk of developing more violent strains must be examined against the level of benefit that this type of research can bring. They therefore believe that such experiments should not be stopped. These petitions are signed by many scientists who believe that attention should indeed be focused on security and safety procedures but research should not be stopped. Their recommendation is that the decision makers regarding the research will be the scientists themselves, and the decisions will be made in a process similar to the one that was in the "Asilomer" process regarding the restrictions on recombinant DNA research.
From the history of microbiology we learn that the conservatives did not promote science for the public benefit. Edward Jenner vaccinated the boy James Phipps against smallpox despite the vigorous opposition of the Royal Society of British Physicians and Louis Pasteur injected the vaccine against the rabies virus without testing its safety. These actions, which are considered today as a horrendous lack of ethics, built the infrastructure for the development of the vaccines that we use to this day and that have saved the lives of millions of people. We must learn from the past and think about the future: research must not be stopped. Our moral duty is to allow scientists to continue their groundbreaking research and to give them the means and infrastructure to maintain their safety, the safety of the environment and public safety.

More on the subject
Scientific research and the war on terrorism, Bracha Reger, Scientific American Israel, October-November 2012.
Alarm over biosafety blunders, J. Cohen, Science, 18 July 2014, Vol. 345 no. 6194 pp. 247-248

on the notebook
Professor Bracha Reger, Emeritus Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the Faculty of Health Sciences at Ben Gurion University, President of Ort Israel and Chairman of the Academic Council of Ort Israel. Served as the chief scientist of the Ministry of Health and was a member of the Council for Higher Education.