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Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Science, Technology, and Society Thomas Easton McGraw-Hill Education Unit 1 1.3 Can Science Be Trusted Without Government Regulation? Page 63 Critical Thinking and Reflection 3. Does publishing the full methods and results of the Fouchier and Kawaoka H5N1 studies seem likely to increase our ability to protect public health from future H5N1 pandemic?
http://www.nature.com/news/the-risks-and-benefits-of-publishing-mutant-flu-studies-1.10138
nature International weekly journal of science
The risks and benefits of publishing mutant flu studies
Research describing two mutant strains of H5N1 avian influenza that spread between mammals is likely to be published in its entirety. Nature examines the controversial decision.
Ed Yong
March 2, 2012
Two teams of scientists, led by Ron Fouchier of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, have created mutant strains of H5N1 avian influenza. These laboratory strains could be passed between mammals more easily than wild strains of the virus.
MEDICAL RF.COM/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Research into mutant strains of avian influenza (white) aims to reveal more about flu transmission mechanisms.
News of the research sparked an intense debate about whether the two teams’ work should be published in full to aid pandemic preparedness or redacted to prevent misuse by terrorists. A meeting convened by the World Health Organization two weeks ago in Geneva, Switzerland, concluded that the papers should be published in full, despite recommendations to the contrary from a US government advisory board. Nature takes a look at the debate and the science.
http://news.wisc.edu/influenza-researcher-yoshihiro-kawaoka-wins-breakthrough-award/
University of Wisconsin Madison
Influenza researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka wins Breakthrough Award
October 7, 2014
Kelly April Tyrrell
The University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Yoshihiro Kawaoka has been recognized as a 2014 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award recipient for his efforts to understand and prevent pandemic influenza.
In recent years, Kawaoka has found himself at the center of controversy surrounding research on highly pathogenic influenza and other sensitive pathogens known as select agents. His studies to understand, monitor, treat and potentially prevent pandemic influenza have often been misrepresented and misunderstood.
However, according to Popular Mechanics — a science and technology-focused magazine published by Hearst Magazines — Kawaoka was chosen despite the controversy because his work studying mutations in viruses that are currently found in nature and carry pandemic potential could “help protect humanity.”
– See more at: http://news.wisc.edu/influenza-researcher-yoshihiro-kawaoka-wins-breakthrough-award/#sthash.D2VHfogO.dpuf
Popular Mechanics
Mike Magnuson
October 7, 2014
BREAKTHROUGH
WHO Yoshihiro Kawaoka University of Wisconsin–Madison
FIELD Virology
ACHIEVEMENT Flu pandemic prevention research.
The virus sits in 2-milliliter vials inside a freezer kept at minus 80 degrees Celsius. At that temperature, in that deep of a deep freeze, the virus is preserved as if in amber, lying in wait. Under a microscope it looks something like a medieval battle weapon, a spherical object stabbed with dozens of little spikes, like the actual virus it was engineered to replicate: the 1918 strain of H1N1, otherwise known as the Spanish flu, a pandemic estimated to have killed more than 40 million people.
The freezer is locked and sealed inside a room made of concrete walls set within a lab surrounded by another set of walls—those outer walls made of 18 inches of concrete, every inch of it reinforced by steel rebar. A box within a box, as it’s known in the research world. Entry is through a series of rooms starting with air-locked, submarine-type doors, and the place is rigged with extensive alarms—more than 500 of them in all, spread throughout the building and attached to various pieces of equipment, ready to alert safety personnel and the campus police who monitor the facility around the clock if someone who doesn’t belong there tries to get in.
The freezers, the air-locked doors, the alarms—they must all operate perfectly, because perfection is the minimum requirement at the $12.5-million Influenza Research Institute. The facility sits on the outskirts of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, home of the Badgers, whose basketball team went to the Final Four this year. But the building seems a thousand miles from all that.