The controversy over whether work on airborne H5N1 bird flu can be published shows that transparency is vital to upholding public trust
So the research moratorium on H5N1 bird flu is over. In 2011 I was one of the first journalists to report the discovery that H5N1 bird flu, which is highly lethal in humans, can mutate to become readily transmissible not just in birds but also in mammals like us – while, apparently, remaining lethal.
What happened next shocked the researchers. Publication of the work was blocked, as US biosecurity experts insisted it would be crazy to tell would-be bioterrorists about this. The 39 labs around the world that do this research responded by declaring a moratorium on further work: there's little point doing research you can't publish.
A year later, the US will shortly launch a new review process to address this. This week, the labs said they would soon resume work on whether, and how, a virus now evolving across Eurasia might become an apocalyptic threat to humanity.
This resumption is good news – but there's a proviso. Hypothetical bioterrorists aside, the real worry for many critics is the danger posed by research itself. We don't want labs to inadvertently release the virus we fear.
That doesn't just require stringent containment and more bureaucracy – it means doing experiments only when benefits really outweigh risks. If, as seems likely, all parties involved cannot agree on that, then the whole process should at least be as transparent as possible. Top research officials in the US have been saying this, and that too is good.
Alarming spin
But are researchers as committed to transparency? The H5N1 kerfuffle has been notable for an alarming amount of spin. Details of the findings have been reinterpreted as pressures have mounted. The experience may have left some researchers even less likely to tell us what they're doing.
The story emerged at a flu meeting in Malta in September 2011. Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam reported that he had made H5N1 able to spread between ferrets via airborne droplets, by simply passing it repeatedly between the animals.
This was the $64,000 question in flu research. At present, H5N1 cannot become a human pandemic as it does not spread this way in mammals. But can it evolve this ability? Some virologists said no. Others said it might, but the mutant would not be as lethal.
No such luck. "All the ferrets died," Fouchier told me. "We have to do more to control H5N1." He was clearly upset at the prospect of such a virus evolving naturally; so were other flu researchers at the meeting. I reported it
Fouchier had left out a lot of detail as the research had been submitted to the journal Science, which doesn't allow authors to say much before publication. When he said the ferrets all died, I thought he was referring to the ones that inhaled the virus. In fact those ferrets lived; the ones that died had had that same virus put into their windpipe.
We would have corrected the article had the researchers complained. Maybe it seemed a minor point: the team had also reported that putting a flu virus in a ferret's windpipe was the best test of its danger to humans. The transmissible virus killed in a way that might be relevant to people – that's what mattered. The detail wouldn't have changed our conclusion.
Dangerous or not?
But then the dispute over whether the work could be published blew up, and The New York Times charged that this research was just too dangerous.
In February last year, the researchers' story had changed dramatically. The press had blown things out of proportion. The mutant virus wasn't dangerous. None of the ferrets that inhaled it died, you had to practically shove it into their lungs to kill them. Anyway, animal work doesn't show what will happen in people.
Efforts to portray the transmissible virus as harmless were almost comical. One researcher told me the mutant H5N1 was no biggie – even the 2009 pandemic flu kills in ferrets' tracheas. Ah, but only one in three – the H5N1 killed them all, so not quite the same.
When the research was finally published, none of the spin seemed very relevant. The message of Malta remained: H5N1 became airborne in mammals, and could still kill. That's enough. Yes, this is animal work: if a virus that kills in a ferret's throat, but not in its nose, emerges in nature, we may get lucky. Or maybe we'd best not inhale.
Full transparency
Some defensiveness is understandable if scientists fear work they rightly consider vitally important may be banned. Yet full transparency is the answer. I fear that lesson has not sunk in. After the papers were published, one of the researchers insisted to me that there was no reason why he should ever talk to a journalist; this week that person begged journalists to tell the public the researchers' side of the story, so they wouldn't get this kind of opposition.
That's not how it's done. Transparency is an important safeguard against some who may take excessive risks (it happens) as well as showing the good that scientists do. It must serve both these functions, or no one will believe the good news.
I gave a talk in Malta too, about public communication. I told a roomful of flu researchers the old risk-management saying: strive to be, not trusted, but accountable. I got a lot of blank, angry stares.
This problem won't go away until that gets rueful, knowing nods. It isn't happening yet.
Debora MacKenzie is a consultant for New Scientist based in Brussels
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