Public role in research oversight

LETTER

Rasmussen et al. (1) argue that “increasing oversight across virology or all microbe research would represent a misdirection of resources and would fail to provide a commensurate increase in safety or security” and “harm surveillance, antiviral discovery, monitoring for resistance to antivirals and vaccines, and other critical efforts.” On the contrary, a strengthened version (2) of the recommendations of the National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity (NSABB) is crucial for the success of microbiological science. Implementing these recommendations would reduce the risks of a deliberate or accidental pandemic, while using precious research resources efficiently, restoring trust in science, strengthening US leadership in biosecurity and biosafety, and safeguarding the biomedical research enterprise, as ASM itself has said (https://asm.org/press-releases/2023/january/asm-commends-nsabb-report).

The commentary by Rasmussen et al. conflates the alleged harms of the NSABB recommendations with those of recent NIH rules involving scrutiny of foreign collaborators. It argues based on a single newspaper article that virology as a whole has been widely chilled by even the possibility of increased safety measures. It elides the distinction between mouse-adapting a pathogen for study in an animal model, which most would support as low risk and high value (3), and deliberate efforts to confer a phenotype resembling human transmission (4, 5). It conflates controversy over the origin of SARS-CoV-2 with well-founded concern that began more than a decade ago (6) about laboratory accidents in high-level biosafety labs (7, 8). Its proposed solution of focusing on “observed outcomes” would imply waiting for high-consequence dangers to have been created, rather than anticipating and limiting such risks.

We note the philosophical/scientific defenses of experiments that increase the transmissibility of pathogens in the lab (9) but find no compelling refutation of arguments that alternative scientific approaches can (10) and do achieve the same goals of enhancing public health while being safer, cheaper, and more generalizable (11–13). Furthermore, vaccine and antimicrobial manufacturers are not claiming that creating more transmissible pandemic pathogens is essential for their work.

Everyone in society has a stake in spending scarce research dollars in ways that increase our preparedness and minimize the risk of pandemics. There is legitimate disagreement among scientists and policymakers about how to do that, but these are value-laden policy questions (14) on which ethicists, security experts, and especially the public have a legitimate voice (15). Extreme budget cuts to important areas of science and state bans on all gain-of-function work on potential pandemic pathogens have been proposed or enacted. We interpret these measures, at least in part, as harmful overreactions to what policymakers legitimately perceive as the scientific community’s reluctance to address public concerns about the risks of a laboratory-associated pandemic. Calls for society to leave concerns about the creation of potential pandemic pathogens to self-regulation by experts (1, 16–18) have not proven convincing to the public and its elected representatives. Asilomar, as an example of self-regulation, has flaws (19). All microbiologists, scientists, and all those who benefit from scientific advances have an interest in addressing these issues promptly and seriously, together.