Science Panel Urges Review of Research Terrorists Could Use

[DuctapeFatwa]

Despite scientists' general distaste for any constraints on research, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences yesterday recommended prior review, at the university and federal levels, of experiments that could help terrorists or hostile nations make biological weapons....

Though physicists have long lived with the fact that certain areas of research are classified and cannot be discussed openly, biologists are relatively new to security concerns. Apart from biological defense research, done mostly at military institutions, academic biology is focused on medicine and conducted without security restraints...

The National Academy of Sciences panel, led by Dr. Gerald Fink of the Whitehead Institute at M.I.T., said research proposals in seven areas of biology should be reviewed by both a scientist's local biosafety committee and by the R.A.C. Local committees could decree that an experiment should not be conducted on their premises, and the federal committee could advise the director of the National Institutes of Health that an experiment should not receive government money. The government has the power to make any research secret and therefore prevent the work from being published...Both Dr. Fink and another panel member, Dr. Ronald Atlas of the University of Louisville, said the academy had taken up the security issue on its own initiative, not from government pressure...

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/09/science/09RESE.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1065725110-T082y0FESRiar3O0pPTAlQ

[fla nocount]

1. Any and all research could help.........

Terrorists(what in the hell does that canned word mean?), Freedom Fighters(that's me) to effect change and help the pharmaceutical giants make yours the next thalidomide baby. Research produces new knowledge period. It's not the gun, it's the wing nut with his finger on the trigger.

More dumbing down of the herds?