By Joseph Brean
At a conference in Malta last fall, a virologist announced that by infecting a ferret with a mutated strain of bird flu, then infecting another ferret with nose swabs from the first, and repeating this 10 times, he created a strain of virus that could pass from ferret to ferret without the swab, simply through the air.
In effect, Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Holland had weaponized bird flu.
Provocative as it was, his experiment went largely unnoticed until last month, when the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Bio-security asked the world's leading scientific journals, Science and Nature, to withhold publication of key details of the methodology and results of Prof. Fouchier's experiment, and of related work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The request to censor science on national security grounds was unprecedented, and caused a global furore. The journals, which have not yet published the papers, signaled their agreement in principle, on the condition that the omitted details be made available to other responsible scientists. More
Provocative as it was, his experiment went largely unnoticed until last month, when the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Bio-security asked the world's leading scientific journals, Science and Nature, to withhold publication of key details of the methodology and results of Prof. Fouchier's experiment, and of related work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The request to censor science on national security grounds was unprecedented, and caused a global furore. The journals, which have not yet published the papers, signaled their agreement in principle, on the condition that the omitted details be made available to other responsible scientists. More
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