Washington

The US government has created a high-level advisory body that will suggest guidelines for scientists whose work might be used by bioterrorists.

Since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, some biologists have worried that the federal government might respond to concerns by imposing a clampdown on their work. So the latest plan has been cautiously welcomed as an indication that the life-sciences community will be allowed to police itself.

On 4 March, Tommy Thompson, the health secretary, announced the creation of a National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. The board will be appointed by Thompson's office and is expected to be up and running by the autumn.

As well as giving advice to government departments about how to approve and manage ‘dual-use’ projects, which have the potential to be used in bioweapons, the board is expected to advise publishers on policies for handling sensitive papers, and researchers on what they can talk about at open scientific meetings.

None of the recommendations will be mandatory, government officials say — but agencies may choose to make adherence to the guidelines mandatory for their grantees.

Thompson and John Marburger, president Bush's science adviser, said that the board is being created partly in response to a report by the US National Academy of Sciences. Marburger added that that the administration has been concerned by a series of recent research reports with dual-use potential, such as a paper about the creation of a synthetic polio virus (J. Cello et al. Science 297, 1016–1018; 2002).

Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, whose office will house the board's secretariat, said that its workings will be modelled largely on those of the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee (RAC), which was created in 1974 to implement rules for conducting studies using recombinant DNA.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the RAC has worked because it created a “culture of responsibility” that has been adopted by researchers in universities and industry. Its rules are generally implemented by local institutional biosafety committees, which will also implement the new guidelines, officials said.

Biologists' groups have cautiously welcomed the plan. “We haven't seen a complete picture, but it seems to sponsor open research and involvement of scientists,” says Janet Shoemaker, director for public and scientific affairs at the American Society for Microbiology.

But some security experts object to the fact that the advisory board will not have the power to make compliance with its rules mandatory. “I find it very curious that they accept the need for mandatory oversight of access to pathogens but reject the idea of mandatory oversight of consequential work with those pathogens,” said Elisa Harris, pathogen projects coordinator at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland in College Park. “It's the work that has the greatest potential to cause destruction or harm on a catastrophic scale.”