Opinion: Caring for Patients from Conflict Zones

I n early 2012, federal officials summoned Michael Imperiale from his home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to a large conference room in Bethesda, Maryland. There, they handed the virologist drafts of two scientific papers. A foreign government had deemed one draft’s contents so risky that it could not be sent via the postal service or attached to an email.

The drafts detailed attempts to alter a lethal avian influenza virus, potentially granting it the ability to spread among humans. Such work, according to the U.S. officials who had funded it, was vital for preparing for a potential flu pandemic. But some scientists wondered whether the research itself could spark a cataclysm. Might someone read the papers, which contained details of how the pathogens had been engineered, and use them as blueprints for bioterrorism?

Months before, Imperiale and more than a dozen colleagues had recommended that earlier drafts of the papers be published with some details redacted. But that halfway option wasn’t going to fly. Now they needed to make a choice: Was it worthwhile to publish the papers in full? Or should the manuscripts, with their potential for misuse, not be published at all?

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