NIH Makes Rare Wise Decision

The story below is from the December 21, 2011, Wisconsin State Journal It was published in the newspaper and on their website. The article is a modified story from the Associated Press.

Feds asked researchers at UW to withhold details about bird flu creation

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government asked scientists at two research centers, including UW-Madison, not to reveal all the details of how to make a version of the deadly bird flu that they created in labs in the U.S. and Europe.

Bill Mellon, UW-Madison associate dean for research policy, said virology professor Yoshihiro Kawaoka has gone through several iterations of a manuscript to the journal Nature to comply with the recommendations.

"That is an awkward situation to be in because, obviously, we're interested in disseminating science," Mellon said. Read more ...

This was a good decision. They ought however, to have stopped funding such total craziness.

The Wisconsin State Journal's article failed to bring up Kawaoka's history of biosafety violations. In this regard, the newspaper failed in its responsibility to its readers and the community. See:
UW-Madison: Bumbling Oafs or Big Fat Liars?
Ebola Error in Wisconsin
Millions dead within weeks
When Spin Turns Deadly

On another note, Bill Mellon's claim about "disseminating science" is pretty much just institutional-self-aggrandizing blather.

In fact, UW-Madison has an active program in place to limit the public's knowledge of what goes on in its labs. An example of the scale of this active white-washing and censorship is their willful destruction of almost 15 years of scientific data simply to keep the public from seeing what is going on in their labs. You can read the sordid tale here.