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U.S. Weighs Proposal for Self-Scrutiny in Scientific Community’s Biological Research By David Ruppe WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is currently evalulating a recent study urging the U.S. scientific community to self-restrict biological research that could aid terrorists, a senior U.S. official said today (see GSN, Oct. 8). White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Marburger, speaking at a bioterrorism conference here, described the study published by the National Academy of Sciences Research Council this month as “a very important report” and said “there will be action soon” by the government in response. The report was important, he said, for promoting a culture of responsibility within the scientific community to protect against their research being used by potential terrorists. Marburger also said the report’s list of seven types of experiments that might potentially aid bioterrorists was “very thought provoking.” “We haven’t had such a list up to the present time. … It makes direction of all future discussions much more concrete and meaningful,” he said. He said the report has sparked an intensive review, primarily at the National Institutes of Health, where officials are considering not only the new study’s recommendations but also other alternatives. The review is “completely open. All range of possibilities are being discussed,” Marburger told Global Security Newswire in comments following his speech. The report has received mixed reviews from researchers for recommending a largely voluntary system for reviewing potentially dangerous research rather than government regulations to control potentially dangerous research. Rutgers University professor Richard Ebright has said the proposed system might enable research facilities, particularly those not funded by NIH, to opt out of reviews. The proposed system, he wrote recently in an e-mail to GSN, would only be meaningful if it entailed the mandatory participation of all institutions and researchers. Marburger, however, suggested sympathy within the administration for the study’s approach. “This is an administration that likes volunteerism, not command-and-control regulations,” he said. “It won’t work if government has to pass down directives … to control research. That’s not how research works,” he said. Marburger said, though, that the proposed system is being evaluated on whether it would be “credible to the public” as well as simple to implement and “minimally intrusive.”
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