A U.S. government panel has concluded that findings from two avian flu studies can be published even though there is a risk that the work could be misused by governments or terrorists to create biological weapons. The weight of the panel's expert opinion is that the "real and present danger" of naturally occurring influenza poses a greater threat than the potential for acts of terrorism that use the work. This is precisely the sort of judgment that the public relies on experts to make. We should defer to their conclusions.

The U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity triggered an international controversy last December when it asked researchers to withhold from publication two studies that outlined ways to make the H5N1 bird flu virus transmittable via human-to-human contact. The virus cannot be transmitted this way in nature; the artificially induced mutation makes this possible and the virus much more lethal.

The prospect of terrorists misusing the research for their own purposes prompted considerable soul-searching among the scientists; the publishers of the two research papers halted publication to let a distinguished group of experts debate the issue.