Scientists overstate anthrax research problem

When 758 microbiologists send an open letter to the director of the National Institutes of Health, protesting the premise of a $1.7 billion research project, everyone should sit up and take notice. Just such a letter was recently dispatched, complaining that unprecedented increases in NIH funding for biodefense projects not only had diverted funds from more basic and important microbiological research — a claim that NIH disputes — but corrupted the NIH peer-review process. A system that in the past awarded grants to the best scientists, the critics suggested, now awards grants to any scientists, good or bad, who study anthrax.

There are good reasons to criticize NIH for its management of the biodefense money that Congress granted after the 2001 anthrax attacks. NIH had never before funded anything other than basic research and had never involved itself directly in the production of specific vaccines or therapies. It is doing so because Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, argued that his institute, and not the Defense Department — which has failed to produce vaccines in the past — was the best place for that work to be done. Mr. Fauci believed (and still does) that there would be spinoffs for other areas of science. But while scientists doing basic research don't like the change, some in Congress have precisely the opposite set of concerns: namely that the NIAID is wasting money pursuing multiple research projects with unclear goals and hasn't figured out how to focus on the nation's more specific biodefense needs.

If it were intended only to get the government to think harder about the best ways to define, fund and manage biodefense work, the open letter would serve a useful purpose. If the letter were intended to point out that some basic research in microbiology, immunology, genetics and other fields could prove, in the long term, more important to the nation's biodefense than specific work on anthrax or plague, we would also agree. That, certainly, is a message that Congress and the administration need to hear.

Where we lose sympathy for the authors is when they state that funds have been diverted from “projects of high public-health importance” to “projects of high biodefense but low public-health importance.” This country has already experienced one anthrax attack. Security officials have stated repeatedly their belief that al-Qaida and others continue to search for more lethal bioweapons. Surely that makes biodefense projects of “high public-health importance.” That this is not more widely understood means that there is still too little contact between the scientific community and national security and intelligence agencies. This letter, which was written and published in an openly confrontational manner, won't help solve that problem.

—This editorial appeared in The Washington Post