The U.S. National Academies of Science concluded that bans on
access are more likely to keep scientists away from their lab
benches than to keep terrorists away from their schemes. The
lead editorial in a leading medical journal called for genomic
data on pathogens to remain widely available, saying the
benefits of promoting medical research far outweigh the risks of
helping bioterrorists. It lauded the same conclusion by a panel
of the U.S. National Academies of Science and Engineering. To
read a summary of the panels decision, click here. On the same
day the Lancet article appeared, researchers from Columbia
University published the sequence for the bacteria causing
Legionairres disease in Science, another highly esteemed
journal, and in GenBank, a public database. Making the sequences
available was one of the conditions of his National Institutes
of Health funding, but corresponding author James Russo said he
was very happy to do so. I asked how one should weigh the risks
and benefits of providing such dat