【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障3系列】【3-16】科技-biology-H5N1

babybearmm

今天的材料都摘自这一期的Science: a special issue on H5N1 (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6088/1521.full)
速度文是Science podcast一篇采访稿，音频文件在这里
http://podcasts.aaas.org/science_podcast/SciencePodcast_120622.mp3

介绍一个接下来大家会反复见到的词汇：ferret
A domesticated polecat kept as a pet or used, esp. in Europe, for catching rabbits. It is typically albino or brown
[attachimg]102694[/attachimg]


[计时一]

Host – Kerry Klein
For nearly eight months, a media storm has surrounded two controversial research papers about H5N1 influenza, or bird flu.  In the wild, this virus has been observed to pass from birds to humans, but not between humans, a characteristic that has limited its ability to generate a pandemic. The research papers in question, submitted to Science and Nature, explain how to synthesize a droplet-transmissible H5N1 strain that can pass between mammals, which raised biosecurity alarms and stoked an ongoing international debate about research with the potential for dangerous misuse.  This week, Science publishes one of those reports as part of a special issue that also includes additional research, news, and commentary on that debate.  Science’s Editor-in-Chief Bruce Alberts, who wrote the introduction to the issue, spoke with me about what the controversy means for future biomedical research and publishing.  Here’s an excerpt of our discussion.

Interviewee – Bruce Alberts
The idea is that the virus is not a major problem for humans now, because it dies rapidly in the air – that is, it doesn’t survive in droplets when you sneeze, or in aerosols.  And so the question is, how difficult is it for this virus to mutate to a form that could be dangerous to humans – that is, one that would spread in the air?  And we had no idea what the answer was.  So these two studies, done independently, use the best model we have for humans for the flu virus, which is ferrets, and tried to answer the question how many mutations does it take, and, therefore, how dangerous is this virus in the future to human populations?

Interviewer – Kerry Klein
And then these two papers actually published the specific mutations that would yield this flu airborne in humans.

[293 words]

[计时二]

Interviewee – Bruce Alberts
So, each paper discovered through different means ways of mutating the virus so that it can survive in the air much better than the normal H5N1 virus does.  So with these specific mutations in the two different experiments, that virus is on the way to becoming dangerous for humans.  An important part of the controversy was, well is this really able to spread effectively through air, as is needed to cause human pandemics?  And there is some real doubt as to whether the virus – although it can survive in air – whether it survives well enough to actually be dangerous to humans.

Interviewer – Kerry Klein
So what are the arguments for publishing these studies in full for the entire scientific community to have access to?  Why did the authors want this to be available for everyone?

Interviewee – Bruce Alberts
Well, always the argument about science is the more people who know about what’s been discovered by other scientists, the more minds there are thinking and creating creative new interventions to get at whatever problem we’re studying – in this case, to try to design protection against this kind of mutation happening in nature, or either to prevent that mutation from happening or to screen effectively for bird populations that have almost evolved to this state.  So, the argument for publishing it openly is that you never know which scientists where will have a method or an idea that will advance our knowledge that will protect humans.  And if you provide this knowledge only to a few scientists, you will greatly reduce the chance that further advances could be made.

Interviewer – Kerry Klein
But even so, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity – the NSABB –recommended redacting these papers, not publishing them in full.  So what was their reasoning for that, for actually restricting what information was made public and what information wasn’t?

[313 words]

[计时三]

Interviewee – Bruce Alberts
This science is a good example of what we call dual-use research.  As I just stated, it could be used for good, for other scientists to build on and to design protective measures that will reduce the chance of a pandemic arising from H5N1 virus and killing large numbers of humans.  But the other side of the dual-use issue is that having such knowledge, in principle, would allow somebody with bad motivations – terrorists or just somebody who’s very unhappy working in a lab and wants to cause some great commotion – it could empower them to produce a virus that might be dangerous. So the dual-use side of this is what is the balance between the probability of somebody using it for harm and the probability of somebody using it for good? And this kind of decision is a very difficult one. And this is why the NSABB was established following the recommendations of a study from the National Academy of Sciences in 2003 to make these kinds of judgments. And, very importantly, this committee is partly composed of distinguished scientists with expertise in microbiology in this case, but also by people with security backgrounds who know about some of the security issues. And so this committee is the closest thing we have to a supreme court to make these kinds of value judgments. And this was the first time – after looking at many other papers – this was the first time they ruled in this direction. Previously, they’ve always ruled, because of the balance and the advantage to openness, to publish in full.

Interviewer – Kerry Klein
Now how do we identify dual-use research in the first place? I mean, this kind of study, you know, may very clearly have good and bad potential outcomes, but there are some that lie more along sort of an unclear, fuzzy line. How do we identify good and bad outcomes of research?

[320 words]

[计时四]

Interviewee – Bruce Alberts
The question you asked was that proposed and addressed by the academy committee in a report that was chaired by the distinguished scientist at MIT, Jerry Fink, and therefore is sometimes called The Fink Report. And this committee, again, had something like seven or eight members of the National Academy of Sciences, and an equal number of security people on it. And, of course, this was set up shortly after 9-11 with the anthrax scare, and so on. The first question was can we ever imagine a time when we might not want to publish something openly? And if so, under what circumstances? And this committee, importantly, decided yes, we could foresee a time and certain kinds of experiments we would not want to publish openly. And they laid out seven different kinds of what they called categories of concern – specific kinds of experiments, such as making a virus more dangerous to the human population. So, as Editor-in-Chief of Science – and I had been president of the Academy when that previous report was prepared – my major point in responding to the requests from the NSABB was to support the NSABB mechanism. First of all, it’s the best mechanism we could imagine for making these decisions. Second of all, without an NSABB, we’d be back where we were before The Fink Report, which is a situation which was very uncomfortable for me personally when I was president of the Academy, where people from the government would come and try to prevent publication of papers that shouldn’t be prevented from publication, people who were largely from a security background and tended to underestimate the advantage of publication and overestimate the dangers of publication. So I felt – and my colleague at Nature, Phil Campbell, the Editor-in-Chief of Nature Magazine – we both felt that we should try to respond positively to the request from the NSABB simply to support the
NSABB mechanism.

[321 words]

[计时五]

Interviewer – Kerry Klein
So what eventually led to the NSABB’s reversal of opinion? You know, what eventually led them to give you the green light?

Interviewee – Bruce Alberts
I’m not really privy to all the details. I did discover during all this time that the NSABB, in making its original decision, never had an in-person meeting with the authors. They never had a detailed discussion of the authors with what exactly in the paper. So one of the reasons why the NSABB met to reconsider was, of course, the WHO meeting which pointed out that the NSABB had a responsibility to deal with international issues, not just national ones. And the second reason was that it came out at the WHO meeting by talking to the authors who were there – unlike at the NSABB meeting – that some of the data had been misinterpreted, in particular, how efficiently this virus spread from animal to animal. And it was now realized that the spread was much less effective than it is for the normal pandemic flu viruses that we know about – seasonal flu viruses. And, second of all, there was a misconception that the ferrets who had been infected by being in a cage next to another ferret, and therefore had received the virus in some kind of droplet or aerosol – they had thought that those ferrets not only got infected, but that they died. And, in fact, none of the ferrets died. So, on the one hand, the spread is less effective than the NSABB had thought, and secondly, the lethality of the virus was being misinterpreted initially in the original experiment.

[271 words]

[自由阅读]

Interviewer – Kerry Klein
How interesting. So the potential for, you know, “evil-doers” to take advantage of this information was, of course, one of the bigger worries for biosecurity officials in the first place. So in the end, how is that being addressed? Can anything actually be done to prevent this research from getting into the wrong hands?

Interviewee – Bruce Alberts
Of course not, I mean, now that anybody has the information about the exact mutations that cause this difference. But if I was a terrorist or somebody who wanted to cause trouble, I wouldn’t do it this way, because it’s now clear that the virus doesn’t spread very well, it’s not that lethal – we thought it was much more lethal to humans originally than it probably is – and, you know, it’s not a weapon that you can control. And, finally, there are only a very few places that could do this kind of reverse genetic engineering that would be needed to make this virus, you’d have to be very sophisticated. So, my own belief is that if you really want to do some harm, there are many easier ways to do it.

Host – Kerry Klein
That was Bruce Alberts, Science’s Editor-in-Chief, talking about controversial flu research published this week in Science. You can find an extended version of the interview on our H5N1 special issue page at www.sciencemag.org/special/h5n1.




友情提示：下面这篇article带有abstract，但作为阅读训练，我就不把abstract放上来了。大家写完越障回忆后，可以参考以下link或pdf附件
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6088/1522.full

另：下图是文中的fig. 1.

[attachimg]102695[/attachimg]
Fig. 1
H5N1 avian influenza virus particles, colored transmission electron micrograph. Magnification: ×670,000 when printed 10 cm wide.
CREDIT: KLAUS BOLLER/PHOTO RESEARCHERS, INC.

[越障开始]

POLICY FORUM

Benefits and Risks of Influenza Research: Lessons Learned

Anthony S. Fauci*, Francis S. Collins


Influenza A virus is an ancient and persistent threat to individual and global health (Fig. 1). Seasonal influenza (which occurs annually, usually in winter) kills ~500,000 people globally and up to 50,000 people in the United States each year. Influenza viruses have animal reservoirs, especially in birds and pigs. They can undergo extensive genetic changes and even jump species, sometimes resulting in a virus to which humans may be highly vulnerable. Such an event can lead to a global health disaster; global influenza pandemics have occurred only three times in this past century. A prime example is the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed between 50 and 100 million people worldwide and caused enormous social and economic disruption. Influenza A viruses circulate widely and are constantly evolving toward pandemic capability, as seen again in 1957, 1968, and 2009 (1). There is thus a clear danger of future pandemics.

Over the last decade, a highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (genus A; subtype H5N1) has emerged among chickens (2). Rarely, the virus has spread to humans, usually individuals with heavy exposure to infected birds. Since 2003, ~600 confirmed cases have occurred in humans in more than a dozen countries. Nearly 60% of these reported cases have resulted in death (3). Because it has been impossible thus far to completely eliminate the virus from chicken flocks or from wild birds or to prevent transmission to mammals, there is a persistent danger that H5N1 viruses [which have continually mutated and evolved (2)] will eventually become more easily transmissible to and among humans. Because humans are not specifically immune to H5N1 influenza, this scenario would have the makings of a potentially devastating pandemic.

One of the goals of pandemic influenza research is to recognize and anticipate how viruses are evolving in the wild toward a phenotype that is dangerous to humans, thereby staying one step ahead of potential pandemics. In this regard, compelling research questions relevant to global health and pandemic preparedness include determining whether highly pathogenic viruses, such as H5N1, have the ability to mutate and/or reassort with another influenza virus to become readily transmissible by the airborne route among humans. If so, (i) what is the likelihood that such mutations or reassortments will happen in nature? (ii) Is there a genetic signature of such a virus that might be helpful in surveillance? (iii) Would such a virus be highly pathogenic for humans? And (iv), would such a virus be sensitive to currently available antiviral drugs and vaccines, or would new ones be necessary? In response to these and related questions, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has intensified the research we conduct and support on pandemic influenza. Much of this research is specifically focused on developing improved countermeasures, including a “universal” influenza vaccine that would protect people from multiple influenza subtypes. In complementary research, NIH-supported scientists study the factors involved in the pathogenesis and transmissibility of H5N1 and other influenza viruses to nonhuman mammals (mice, guinea pigs, ferrets, and nonhuman primates) to identify potential clues to the determinants of the same properties in humans.

Within this context, global attention has been paid recently to two NIH-funded studies of H5N1 transmissibility and pathogenesis in ferrets. In those studies, H5N1 viruses were made transmissible via respiratory droplets among ferrets by engineering the virus; well-described and published protocols including reverse genetics, reassortment, and passaging of viruses in mammals were used. Manuscripts describing the studies (4, 5) have generated an unprecedented degree of discussion, concern, and disagreement among scientists, as well as the public, regarding whether the experiments should have been performed in the first place and whether they should be published in their entirety. Major sources of concern have been that the results might be used by bioterrorists to harm the public or that the virus might accidentally escape and cause a pandemic.

Research on H5N1 viruses, including the experiments reported in these two papers (4, 5), is comparable to that which has been conducted over decades with other seasonal and pandemic influenza viruses in ferrets and other animal models. The use of the ferret as an animal model for influenza transmissibility dates back to the 1930s, as ferrets are easily infected with influenza and sneeze when infected, which is useful for studying the airborne route needed for sustained human-to-human transmission. Understanding the virus characteristics associated with enhanced transmissibility—even in an imperfect animal model, such as the ferret—can benefit surveillance for naturally evolving wild viruses if they continually mutate toward a “genomic signature” that could be recognized as potentially predictive of a certain phenotype. Given the complexities of viral transmission, a virus’s ability to adapt to a host species, pathogenesis (a virus’s ability to cause disease), and the interrelation among these factors, which are likely to be unique to each influenza virus, any particular genomic signature will not necessarily predict how a given virus will act. Nonetheless, studies such as these provide incremental knowledge that the scientific community can build upon. A more in-depth understanding of the genetic evolution of influenza viruses should positively affect our ability to recognize and respond to influenza outbreaks.

However, whenever one deliberately manipulates a virus or a microbe, it is always possible, at least theoretically, that the research results could be used by bioterrorists to intentionally cause harm, or that an accidental release of a pathogen from a laboratory could inadvertently cause harm. Such research is referred to as “dual-use research,” as the research potentially has both positive and negative applications. A particular subset of dual-use research is referred to as “dual-use research of concern” or DURC. DURC is defined as life sciences research that, on the basis of current understanding, can be reasonably anticipated to provide knowledge, information, products, or technologies that can be directly misapplied to pose a significant threat with broad potential consequences to public health and safety, agricultural crops and other plants, animals, the environment, materiel, or national security (6). If a particular experiment is identified as DURC, that designation does not inherently mean that such research should be prohibited or not widely published. However, it does call for us to balance carefully the benefit of the research to public health, the biosafety and biosecurity conditions under which the research is conducted, and the potential risk that the knowledge gained from such research may fall into the hands of individuals with ill intent. Research that could enhance the transmissibility of H5N1 viruses clearly is DURC.

In this regard, the question of whether to publish the two H5N1 studies in ferrets has been intensively discussed by an independent federal advisory committee known as the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) (7, 8). On the basis of their recommendations and other evaluations, the U.S. government agreed that the research is important for the public health and should be published. However, important lessons were learned along the way and, appropriately, triggered an examination of our approach concerning the conduct, oversight, and communication of DURC. In this regard, the U.S. government announced on 29 March 2012 the U.S. Government Policy for Oversight of Life Sciences Dual Use Research of Concern (6). This policy document outlines, for federal departments and agencies that conduct or fund life sciences research, steps to determine whether projects fall under the definition of DURC, to assess the risks and benefits of these projects, to review them regularly, and to develop risk mitigation plans. In the process of weighing the potential risks and benefits of publishing these two manuscripts (4, 5), it also became clear that, when possible, it is critical to identify research with DURC potential before the initiation of the project and, certainly, before the results are submitted for publication. Such monitoring in the case of NIH-funded research requires the concerted effort of all involved, including scientists applying for or in receipt of NIH funding and NIH program officials. Additional guidelines will be needed as well to assist biosafety committees in evaluating DURC at the institutions where the research is conducted.

Furthermore, as a result of the public discussion of these two manuscripts, major gaps in our knowledge of influenza became painfully obvious. For example, there was considerable scientific debate about how well data from the ferret model can be extrapolated to understand influenza virus transmission and pathogenesis in humans. An H5N1 virus strictly adapted for ferret transmissibility may not be entirely relevant to humans. Moreover, although it is likely that the officially reported 60% case-fatality rate for human H5N1 influenza is artificially high (because nonfatal cases are less likely to be reported), there are limited surveillance data on which to base a more accurate estimate. NIH has begun a dialogue with the influenza research community about addressing these and other questions and will initiate a more strategic approach to defining the research gaps that must be addressed in order to responsibly move the field forward. In addition to identifying research gaps, the discussion of these manuscripts underscores the important practical issues of implementing rapid turnaround time between virus isolation and sequencing to provide real-time surveillance.

Finally, despite the importance of performing influenza research that may have DURC potential, this recent experience has underscored the fact that civil society needs to be involved in the dialogue early on. Clearly, research should be conducted and published only if the potential benefits to society outweigh the risks to national security and the potential harm to society. The risk/benefit calculation for certain experiments and their communication is not always obvious, and the current experience reflected considerable disagreement even in the scientific community. The ultimate goal of the new U.S. government-wide DURC policy is to ensure that the conduct and communication of research in this area remain transparent and open and that the risk/benefit balance of such research clearly tips toward benefitting society. The public, which has a stake in the risks and the benefits of such research, deserves a rational and transparent explanation of how decisions are made. It is hoped that the upcoming dialogue related to the new DURC policy will be productive. A social contract among the scientific community, policy-makers, and the general public that builds trust is essential for success of this process.

[1706 words]

铁板神猴

果断拿下沙发 那只ferret比Longman上的可爱多了~~
--------------------------------
1'43''
1'38''
1'41''
1'41''
1'36''
1'07''

10'00''

猫咪团团

神猴果然是个沙发帝...
------------------------
1:43
1:20
1:21
1:09
1:14
59'
10:07

完了，最近做作业总也不在状态，肿么会这样？...

babybearmm

神猴真神速啊~~嗯哪，放了个最可爱的，wiki上的

果断拿下沙发 那只ferret比Longman上的可爱多了~~

-- by 会员 铁板神猴 (2012/6/26 11:29:58)

jiline

怎么速度也有点看得云里雾里的(⊙o⊙)？
1'29
1'38
1'37
1'37
1'28

越障：
9‘51
Influenza A virus is a threat to individual and global health.H5N1 have continually mutated which will eventually become more easily transmissible to and among humans.
Introduce the goals of pandemic influenza research.
Maniputlating a virus or a microbe could be used by bioterrorists to intentionally casue harm.
Whether to publics the two H5N1 studies in ferrets depends on monitoring rules.
Need to identify the research gaps between  ferrets and humans.
In addition, the civil society needs to be involved in the discussion of public influenza research results.

女王的肥皂

那个 请教各位NN，你们要背单词吗？每天花多少时间背单词呀。自从参加这个，我就觉得自己单词量真不够。

teddybearj4

一早上都想抢姐姐的沙发，一个午饭时间就这么多楼过去了T.T 猴哥横扫各大沙发~
——————————————
速度：
1'47   2'03   1'47   1'25   1'51

越障：11'03(这次的越障好长啊~)
Main idea:
the passage talks about the pros and cons of doing rearches on the influenza. Later, the author discuss the essentiality of doing such rearch even though it has some risks of making use of the terrorists.
Structure:
*Some influenzas caused great desasters in our human history.(3 breakouts)
*Humans have immune a specific virus. Since virus may evolve and human can be vunlerable by exposing to a evolving virus, it is essential to do rearches on H1N5.
-raise 4 questions to be solved by doing research.
*there are two rearches appear, but people hesitate to release the draft of these two rearches for they have "dual-use", taken by good purpose and evil purpose.
*Lastly, the author presents that it should be balanced-off the benefits and risks of presenting the draft to the public.

(越障里面讲到被恐怖分子用来干嘛干嘛的时候，生化危机各类电影里面画面就开始在脑袋各种浮现了，好激动啊！好吧~我承认我不应该在看文章的时候YY= =)

在回忆的时候怎么就想不起来文章里面的手稿是哪个单词了，写完看回去才发现居然是manuscripts~就想着draft了= =

小胖宝

2'21, 2'13, 1'59, 2'28, 2'01, 1'40
12'21

铁板神猴

这都是缘分哪~

peill

Baby的内容总是特别丰富特别有组织。赞一个。

First passage is an interview to a chief editor of the science magazine. It mainly talks about the public concern on the newly published articles, which illustrates the two independent research on how to mutate the H1N1 to a versus that can be contagious among human individuals. As answers, the Chief Editor talks about what is Dual side research, how to distinguish them at the firs time, origins of NSABB and how to prevent the virus going to bad hands. As an impression from the interviews, scientists are doing work to prevent science advance be used for evil activities and the 2 latest papers will not cause problem to our society.

The seconds one is so long that my mind can not focus after 3 paragraphs. Then i just finish the first sentences of those paragraphs. those are the points i can come up with:
- influenza research results
- what is H1N1
- how would scientist do on H1N1 study
- Research results can be used by evil purpose
- How would people respond to this concern