Flu Researcher Backtracks Saying Dangerous Flu Research Must Go On

Last month, as the LA Times reports, a US advisory board asked prominent science journals to refrain from publishing papers that detailed work being done by research scientists on various forms of flu, most specifically the H5N1 variant. Because most journals agreed to hold off on publishing such papers, some research organizations announced they would cease such work. Now however, as several news organizations such the New York Times, are reporting, one such researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka has published a paper in one of the most prominent scientific journals in the world, Nature, announcing his decision to reverse his earlier decision to stop such work, writing that it is imperative that such work continue.

The whole problem is, when researchers work on understanding how flu viruses work so that they can stop them, they have to create variants that can sometimes be more harmful than anything else in existence. If scientific journals were to publish the results of breakthroughs, terrorists could conceivably use that information to create super-viruses that they could then use as a very powerful weapon.

The problem for research scientists in this field is most of them rely on grants to do their work, and the way research labs finagle grant money is by writing papers that get published in respectable journals. If the journals stop printing their papers, such researchers are left floundering in the dark with the threat of diminished funds. And if that happens, research into how flu viruses and the ways that they can be stopped, stops, leaving us all very vulnerable to the next natural attack, such as the one that wiped out millions of people during the last pandemic in the early 1900's.

Because of this, the scientific community is feeling rather nonplussed, reports Fox News, and rightly so. One the one hand, they've embarked on a truly dangerous career path; scientists in communicable disease fields periodically fall victim to the tiny organisms they are trying to study. Such work leaves them feeling scared, but proud as well and most, the Times reports, have feelings of great pride in their work, and thus, the reversal by one of the more prominent researchers in the community today, comes as little surprise.

What's still not clear however, is what approach scientific journals will take. On the one hand, the editors are surely feeling the responsibility of withholding information that could prove deadly should it fall into the wrong hands. On the other, their very survival depends on the timely publication of research achievements so that other's can build on them.

In this matter, as with most other scientific endeavors, it's likely only time will tell how things will turn out.