Mutant Bird Flu Research: Bias accusation rattles US biosecurity board

A closed meeting, convened last month by the US Government to decide the fate of two controversial unpublished papers on the H5N1 avian influenza virus was stacked in favour of their full publication, a participant now says. Michael Osterholm, who heads the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in Minneapolis, is a member of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), which was tasked with evaluating the research. In a letter to Amy Patterson, associate director for science policy at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and sent to other members of the NSABB, Osterholm writes that the meeting agenda and presenters were “designed to produce the outcome that occurred“. The letter was leaked to Nature by an anonymous source.

The two-day meeting held at the end of March was meant to put an end to swirling controversy around research papers describing an H5N1avian influenza virus able to pass between mammals, in this case ferrets, which are a model for human flu transmission. When the NSABB was asked by the US government to review the papers for publication in the fall of 2011, they suggested that the papers be published in redacted form, stripping away detail that would allow people to recreate the viruses.

The recommendation was a controversial compromise pitting the ideals of open, international science communication against concerns that the work could be misused by bioterrorists or result in the accidental release of a potentially devastating pathogen. In February, after the World Health Organization convened a brief meeting in Geneva, Switzerland that favoured full publication, the US government asked NSABB to reconvene and reconsider their position in light of modifications made to the papers and new information presented by the researchers.

At that meeting, the NSABB revised their position, voting unanimously to publish one of the papers, a manuscript submitted to Nature by Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, Madison and the University of Tokyo. But the board voted only 12-to-6 in favour of publishing the other paper, submitted to Science by Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Several members of the board, including Osterholm felt that the modifications made to the paper did not strip away their concerns.

In the letter, dated 12 April, Osterholm writes that the March meeting was stacked heavily in favour of experts doing such research on flu viruses, who had an interest in the outcome of the decision. Read More