The Sunshine Project
News Release
7 February 2006

BARDA's Biggest Secret is the Public's Loss: Are Biodefense Labs
and National Security Agencies Arriving at a Secrecy Agreement?

The biggest casualty of a conflict between scientists and security agencies may be open research institutions and the public's right to know about dangerous experiments with biological weapons agents. With proposed new secrecy, lab accountability will diminish, leading to more accidents, poor judgment, and a decline of international confidence in US biodefense research.

In a proposed law on the Senate floor, a giant new biodefense "sensitive but unclassified" (SBU) hole would be torn in the Freedom of Information Act, creating new secrecy at labs across the country. It is a ham fisted attempt to resolve conflicts between secretive spies and cocky scientists who disagree over the risks posed by research on biological weapons agents.

BIODEFENSE BOOM & SECURITY: Since 2001, scores of US universities and biotechnology companies have benefited handsomely from billions of dollars in biodefense cash. Across the country, biodefense labs are sprouting up like weeds. The unrelenting spigot of federal money has put thousands of scientists and technicians in the business of studying bioweapons agents. Almost all of them are novices in the field.

Contrary to what some might expect, US national security agencies have not been altogether pleased with the defense boom. It has created many new risks in many new places. A major concern that the agencies have is that dangerous dual-use technologies (such as genetically-modified poxviruses) and the skills needed to create bioweapons will proliferate, thereby undermining security.

Defense priorities and obsession with secrecy at the security agencies, however, makes them ill-suited to intervene in bioscience policy. But, generally for different reasons than the spies, some public interest groups are also concerned that the essentially unregulated biodefense labs are not interested in, or capable of, adequate self-policing, and that this problem may lead to a disaster.

BIOSCIENCE FAILS TO ADDRESS ITS PROBLEMS: Yet biodefense labs have generally responded to the proliferation and accident concerns with a disinterested yawn and an outstretched hand (for more money). In sum, their reply has consisted of little more than inconsequential verbiage about voluntary codes of conduct and perfunctory bioethical genuflection.

Rather than stepping forward with serious proposals for mandatory oversight of dangerous dual-use research, science has gone on taking the federal money and pleading "scientific freedom". Stalling, the cash-flush biodefense labs are hoping that security is just a passing fad. This is evident, for example, at the National Science Advisory Board on Biosecurity (NSABB), a newly-minted but flaccid body that, despite heavy responsibilities, can't even find enough substance to make itself look busy for a one day meeting.

SECRET MODUS VIVENDI?: But these radically different institutions - the spooks and the scientists - may be moving toward a modus vivendi. Unfortunately, the secretive "solution" that has been proposed would make things worse. It is to tear a hole in the Freedom of Information Act by creating a new exemption for "sensitive but unclassified" (SBU) biodefense research. The proposal is found in a bill on the US Senate floor (S.1873) sponsored by Richard Burr (R-NC), the same bill that would create a new Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA).

The proposed legislation takes a radically wrong tack. The exemption is so broad that it could make all substantive aspects of practically every biodefense project funded by BARDA a secret. According to Sunshine Project Director Edward Hammond, "Two alpha male elephants are colliding, and you don't need a microscope - or a wiretap - to find out who's being squished in the middle: The public and its right to know are getting pancaked between these two beasts."

ALTERNATIVE PROPOSAL: It needn't be this way, says the Sunshine Project. "It's easy to sympathize with Senator Burr's aim, in the sense that many agree that labs with bioweapons agents need strong new regulation," says Hammond, "but this ham fisted proposal is the worst of both worlds - all secrecy and no openness. It would create mistrust and reduce accountability, which will encourage both accidents and poor judgment."

"Instead of punishing the public for offenses by science," says Hammond, "the Senator should be sticking a fork in those that are profiting from the biodefense boom yet refusing to come to terms with their responsibilities. A 'sensitive but unclassified' accident is still an accident, just one that nobody learns from. Disturbing discoveries will still seep into the public domain. Covering things up would worsen the problems and could build a false sense of security." Publishers have rejected 'sensitive but unclassified' reasoning.

The Sunshine Project is calling for the proposed Freedom of Information Act exemption to be removed in its entirety from S.1873. Instead, and for all biodefense projects, the Congress should make compliance with federal lab safety guidance a matter of law, rather than an unenforced suggestion. Congress should also block the self-interested institutions that take biodefense cash from overseeing themselves, given their refusal - and probable inability - to self-regulate.

"Transparency is critical to everyone's safety and security," says Hammond, "A mountain of SBU or classified information will do more to obscure emerging threats than to resolve them. Secrecy will heighten the chances of a catastrophic lab accident and increase the possibility of biodefense labs veering off-course into prohibited areas of research. We need more accountability, not less."