Human Security vs Scientific Freedom: How Bird Flu has Provoked an Overdue Debate

Dangerous scientific experiments conducted to enhance the transmissibility of H5N1 (bird flu) has serious international and public health consequences.

Published on 16 March 2012 in ISS Today

Dr. Edward Hammond is Director of Prickly Research (www.pricklyresearch.com) and an advisor to the Third World Network. Dr. Chandre Gould is a senior researcher in the Crime and Justice Programme of the ISS  

Experiments conducted by two groups of scientists last year, one in the US and the other in the Netherlands, have provoked a policy imbroglio in most parts of the world that is destined to fester through 2012. The experiments, funded by the National Institute of Health in the United States, were aimed at determining how the bird flu virus could be made transmissible between mammals. The result was a deliberately created “bird flu” strain that may be capable of passing from human to human.

Much coverage in the mainstream and scientific press in the developed world has focused on the dispute over whether or not to publish the studies as some fear they could provide recipes for criminals or terrorists. However,  bigger issues are at stake such as questions about how the international community should oversee particularly risky types of infectious disease research? What, if any, research should be impermissible? Who can make that call? And what should the role of the World Health Organization (WHO) be in this tricky field that mixes issues of public health and security? Despite the important international implications of this debate, little attention has been paid to it in Africa.

On one side are advocates of “scientific freedom” who offer no apologies for the deliberate creation of these extremely dangerous bugs. They say the experiments are important to prepare responses to a future influenza pandemic. On the other side are a more heterogeneous group of safety and security advocates who are dismayed at the lack of oversight of the laboratories where such experiments occur. They argue that the risks posed by such experiments outweigh the benefits and that they should never have been performed. They argue that the research contributes little to development of vaccines, and are concerned about the potential for laboratory accidents that may have far reaching negative health consequences.

Many critics of the research also want new procedures to review security aspects of dangerous experiments before they happen. Some in this group additionally want details of some experiments kept secret from those considered America’s political enemies.

The US government, which both funded the experiments and is trying to coordinate a response to the security concerns they have raised, has ended up broadcasting mixed messages. The health ministry, which is amenable to the interests of big science, tends toward the “scientific freedom” position, while other officials are more likely to advocate action to reign in risks. So the health ministry blandly promises new biosecurity advice to laboratories, a project that has lingered undone for nearly a decade. This guidance will likely be nonbinding and unambitious, and have effect only in the US. Others meanwhile press for mandatory measures that would create layers of local, national, and international review for the small set of experiments deemed highly risky.

Caught in this messy situation is the WHO, whose past successes have often stemmed from its ability to bypass political rivalries – such as its eradication of smallpox in the midst of the Cold War. If a new international system to review especially risky infectious disease research is to be developed, there is no question that WHO would need to be, at some level, involved. 

Yet such a system has the potential to be poisonous to the WHO and its goals to promote public health interests over political rivalries. What happens, for instance, if the US goes to the WHO to stop research results from being provided to a rival such as Iran?

This is a less hypothetical problem than you may suspect. Some leading US biological security voices appear to believe that WHO should be bent to serve American security interests. They find it reasonable that WHO would manage a two-tiered system of access to research information, dividing nations between those deemed (by the US amongst others) trustworthy and those that are not. Much as the Non-Proliferation Treaty has divided the world into those who may, and those who may not have nuclear weapons.

Compounding the difficulty for the WHO is that in May 2011 it adopted a new international Framework agreement on sharing influenza viruses and research data. This agreement is the culmination of a negotiation that was largely divided along North-South lines.  Developing countries, led by Indonesia, sought to reform WHO’s influenza surveillance network, which plays a critical global role in influenza diagnostics and vaccine selection.

Influenza vaccines are made from influenza viruses, and developing countries rightly criticized the WHO for collecting viruses in the name of public health and then gifting those viruses to the pharmaceutical industry that used them to develop proprietary commercial vaccines. Moreover, the industry is uninterested in producing and selling influenza vaccines to developing countries, at the prices that they could afford. At the centre of H5N1 outbreaks, Indonesia found itself unable to buy vaccines made from the viruses that it gave to the WHO, and which the WHO gave to industry.

The Framework promises to change this with a commitment from vaccine makers to provide benefits to developing countries in return for access to the viruses. These viruses include those that were used in the experiments that kicked off the present controversy, which were collected by the WHO system from Indonesia and Vietnam.

Ironically, in the negotiation of the Framework, the staunchest advocate for the unrestricted sharing of influenza viruses between nations was none other than the United States, which feared that Indonesia or other countries would become so frustrated that they would abandon the WHO system by making bilateral deals with vaccine companies – cutting others out of the loop.

Now, however, the United States is making an abrupt change of course. Concerned that the H5N1 experiments could offer its geopolitical opponents a map to create a particularly nasty biological weapon, the US doesn’t want these engineered viruses and key details of the research freely shared.

Thus, having just fixed virus-sharing problems with the Framework, the WHO now must deal with one of its weightier members wanting to revert to a system that collects all the viruses but does not equitably share the benefits. This time, the forces auguring for disparity are related to security, rather than economic interests.

With advances in biotechnology enhancing the dangerous potential of engineering viruses that transmit from human to human, it makes a great deal of sense for specific types of research to be pre-screened and more tightly overseen.  Some experiments, especially those intended to increase the danger a disease poses, may be too risky to allow at all. Also, because some such diseases can quickly spread around the world, it stands to reason that an international review should be required in cases where the most extreme danger is posed.

But this is no simple task. In fact, the potential political obstacles to an international review system may be insurmountable – at least if governments want to protect the independence of the international public health agency. Governments that look to the WHO to implement their national security policy would best look elsewhere. If a depoliticised international research review system could be established with countries on equal footing, however, it may help ensure that we are less often confronted with dangerous surprises such as the recent flu experiments. Given that any worldwide pandemic is likely to hit the African continent harder than others, we should prepare a response that upholds public health interests by ensuring that influenza research goes forward that is well considered and properly overseen, to improve public health outcomes.