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
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