SCIENTISTS DISCUSS BALANCE OF RESEARCH AND SECURITY

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 - Leading scientists began talks here today on whether
and how to withhold publication of scientific information that could
compromise national security.

The discussions at the National Academy of Sciences follow a raft of
post-Sept. 11 restrictions on research into some 64 substances that could
be used in biological weapons. The discussions were also partly an effort
to fend off potential government censorship or other steps to control
unclassified research that the new domestic security law terms "sensitive."

The talks were prompted by the hesitance of microbiologists to publish
their full research in scientific journals out of concern that terrorists
could use the information. While restrictions on research have long been a
fact of life for chemists and nuclear physicists, they are new and not
entirely welcome among microbiologists, who say data must be published so
other scientists can verify the quality of the research by reproducing the
results.

"We in the life sciences are in the process of losing some of our
innocence," said Stephen S. Morse of the Joseph L. Mailman School of Public
Health at Columbia University. "Knowledge, often using very simple
materials, is also the critical ingredient in making a biological weapons
advance."

The discussions brought together two communities that have often viewed
each other with distrust, if not disdain: security experts and scientists.
While some scientists contend that the best defense against biological
weapons is robust research that is widely accessible, security specialists
maintain that scientists are being naive at best, and reckless at worst.

"These two communities, if we do not start now with a constructive dialogue
with each other, we're going to turn this into a disaster," said John J.
Hamre, president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
which sponsored the meeting along with the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Hamre noted that the political climate in Washington and around the
nation supported greater restrictions on science and civil liberties in the
name of fighting terrorism. If scientists did not take the security
concerns seriously, he said, politicians and policy makers with little
understanding of science would step in with "blanket restrictions on
science, not knowing what's sensitive and what's not sensitive."

"For precious little security, we would have devastating effects for the
conduct of science," said Dr. Hamre, a former deputy secretary of defense.

John H. Marburger, director of the White House Office on Science and
Technology Policy, noted that under a Reagan-era directive, research that
was not classified as secret when ordered by the government could not be
classified retroactively. But citing a report by the Johns Hopkins Center
for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, he said such "traditional regulatory
approaches are not well suited to biosecurity concerns."

Dr. Marburger did not reveal any impending policy changes, but said, "Those
concerns are public concerns, and to them the public deserves a rational
and serious response from its government."

The discussions, in a sense, ran against the instincts of many scientists
here. Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, stood
before a picture of children gathered around a giant bust of Albert
Einstein and recalled the society's founding mission: "to make science much
more accessible to the nation and the world." Today's discussions pondered
the opposite.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, new laws and regulations restrict who may work
on 64 "select agents" that could be used to make biological weapons,
barring students or scholars with a drug conviction or a history of mental
illness and those from countries labeled sponsors of terrorism from
participating in research. Universities and clinical and research
laboratories have inventoried their select agents, with many of them urging
researchers to destroy their stocks unless they were needed for current
projects. Scientists found with such agents in violation of the law could
face five years in prison.

Lewis Branscom, a Harvard professor who is advising the university on
future work with select agents and other security issues, said he feared
not so much a "frontal assault" on the First Amendment's freedom to speak
and publish as "an elaborate web of controls that look and smell and taste
like classification."

Barring groups of people - certain foreigners, marijuana smokers or people
with clinical depression, say, from the research, he said, "reminds me very
much of the McCarthy days."

Ronald Atlas, president of the American Society of Microbiologists, noted
that proposed regulations issued in December included prohibitions on
certain avenues of experimentation, and said he was concerned by First
Amendment issues.

"Do you have a right of inquiry?" Dr. Atlas asked. "It's almost biblical:
when God says, `Thou shalt not eat of the Tree of Knowledge.' "

In the cold war, the United States faced a technologically advanced
adversary, but today's threat from enemy nations and terrorists is more
diffuse, with discoveries that appear benign sometimes providing the clues
for weapons to spread disease. Outlining a hair-raising next generation of
biological armaments, George Poste, chairman of the bioterrorism task force
at the Defense Department, said, "I do not wish to see the coffins of my
family, my children and grandchildren created as a consequence of the utter
naivete, arrogance and hubris of people who cannot see there is a problem."