Concerned. NSABB member Michael Osterholm criticized the review process of the controversial document of influenza in a new letter.
Courtesy of the University of Minnesota
last month, a third of the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) disagreed with the recommendation of the group to publish full two studies that describe how the bird flu virus transmissible in mammals. Now, one of the six dissidents, flu epidemiologist Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, wrote a scathing critique of the meeting that led to the decision. In a letter sent yesterday to Amy Patterson, an official at the US National Institutes of Health, headquartered oversees NSABB, Osterholm charged that the meeting was "designed to produce the result that occurred."
Osterholm and other dissidents in particular have had strong concerns about a study by Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, Netherlands, which is being considered in Science. The seven-page letter to Osterholm, obtained by Science , tells many arguments he has made publicly before the need to redact details of the experiments in ferrets Fouchier group, a model used to study how flu viruses behave in humans. But the letter adds Osterholm new scientific detail its concerns and also specifies why he believes the meeting a bad precedent for future NSABB deliberations. "Although I do not claim that there was a sinister motive by the [U.S. government] regarding either the agenda or guest speakers, I think there was a bias towards finding a solution which was much less of a science- and solid policy basis of the analysis of risk-benefit and more on how to get us out of this difficult situation, "Osterholm wrote.
Scientifically, Osterholm revealed that Fouchier new data, which is not in his manuscript in progress, which makes it even easier for others to create a mutated version of avian flu H5N1 transmits in ferrets. He argues that attempts to publish these works raise all the same problems as the group struggled with for the last 6 months, and he predicted that the paper "will prove to be the straw that breaks the camel." The current decision NSABB, he complained, "just launched the can down the road to another manuscript."
The 2-day meeting itself, Osterholm argued, did not constitute an "objective examination provided by an expert in the field of selfless purpose" about the ease with which groups of bad intentions could learn to engineer a H5N1 transmits humans. experts at the meeting that dealt with these scientific, costs Osterholm, "have a real conflict of interest that their laboratories are involved in the same type of work and the results of our deliberations affect them directly, too. "He called a meeting of information that NSABB members received intelligence experts" one of [the] most incomplete and, dare -I say, unnecessary briefings small security that I have ever attended. "
Susan Ehrlich, a retired judge and NSABB member who also voted against the manuscript publishing Fouchier in full, the letter says Osterholm of "this thoughtfully very valid points, those who deserve and serious discussion."
the letter Osterholm is available in its entirety.
0 Komentar