Dutch duel.
Fouchier and responsible public health Marianne Donker both spoke in a public debate last night.
Martin Enserink
AMSTERDAM -After an international meeting of scientists and security experts on Monday, the Dutch government said that it can decide quickly whether virologist Ron Fouchier of Erasmus MC in Rotterdam is eligible for an export license that would allow him to resubmit his controversial study transmissibility of H5N1 for publication by science .
Fouchier, for his part, said he decided today to apply for an export license, required for so-called dual-use technology, after a meeting with his co-authors, the board Erasmus MC, and lawyers. But the application to specify that the researchers dispute the obligation to do so, a legal construction that Fouchier says will avoid creating a precedent. Fouchier is still "adamantly opposed" to the requirement of a license, he worried establish a "terrible precedent" for researchers in infectious diseases in Europe.
A government spokesman confirmed that Fouchier filed an application today and said Henk Bleker, Minister for Agriculture and Foreign Trade, is likely to make a decision "within days. " (The fact that the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte submitted the resignation of his entire cabinet yesterday, will not delay the decision.)
The question is studying Fouchier H5N1 transmissibility in ferrets which came under surveillance by the US National science Advisory Board for biosecurity (NSABB), and a similar paper by Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. NSABB recommended to fully publish the documents at the end of 2011, but reversed that decision last month after studying the revised manuscripts.
The Dutch government has yet to take a position if the Fouchier document should be published. Yesterday's meeting in The Hague was organized by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and included scientists and security experts from the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Indonesia and Vietnam, as well as representatives of the World Health Organization, Nature and science , the two journals in which manuscripts were submitted. The closed meeting was set up to gather additional information and did not lead to formal recommendations, said Marianne Donker, head of the Department of Public Health at the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports , one of eight Dutch ministries involved in aspects of the case.
The government had already spoken at length with Fouchier and consulted two Dutch intelligence agencies. "We now have almost all the information on the table," said Donker. After the recovery NSABB, some expect the Dutch government to try to stop the publication of the document, which was also greenlighted by a group of experts convened by the World Health Organization and the US government . But the government insisted that Fouchier apply for a license to export first.
Last night Donker and Fouchier clashed during a public debate organized by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences here, where Fouchier was struggling to hide his exasperation. "This is pure censorship, as far as I'm concerned," he said. Donker, meanwhile, asked Fouchier "not to let this degenerate case." "We would like to continue this process with Ron as we're supposed to," she said.
At the heart of their argument is the government's opinion that Fouchier needs an export license to publish the document or even post it on the laboratory website, where it would be accessible to readers outside the Netherlands. the government bases the decision on a regulation of the European Union 09 and a corresponding Dutch law prohibiting the export of certain goods and technologies that could be used for good or evil. an Annex to the Regulation stipulates that the prohibition includes H5N1 and technologies related to the virus and many other human pathogens, animals and plants. But the Regulation provides a exemption for "basic scientific research", defined as "experimental or theoretical work undertaken primarily to acquire new knowledge of the fundamental principles of phenomena or observable facts, not primarily directed towards a specific practical aim or objective."
Fouchier said her study falls into this category, because it is interested in the fundamental question of what makes the flu virus transmissible between mammals. Furthermore, the invocation of the government's export control rules to prevent the publication of an unprecedented document Fouchier said, and he warned that if the Dutch interpretation of EU regulations door the day, work many European researchers could be paralyzed
Donker emphasized that Fouchier himself has always insisted on the practical benefits of its findings may have. - -To Help prevent pandemics to test drugs and vaccines against the H5N1 pandemic strains. "This is not basic research. It is directly applicable," she said.
Fouchier presented his data earlier in the day in The Hague, as did Kawaoka. present to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was also longtime collaborator of Fouchier Derek Smith, a mathematician at Cambridge University, who presented the data from an epidemiological document on which Kawaoka and Fouchier collaborated. This document, also presented at the meeting NSABB in March, puts the data in the two manuscripts controversial perspective Fouchier said. A fourth presenter spoke about non-proliferation.
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