Though passed with good intentions, enforcing new anti-bioterrorism laws could potentially do more harm than good, said R. Timothy Mulcahy, UW-Madison's associate vice chancellor for research policy.
In an editorial in last week's issue of Science, Mulcahy expressed frustration with how federal agencies are implementing last year's Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act and the Agricultural Bioterrorism Protection Act.
The problem, Mulcahy wrote, is not the regulations but a \lack of communication among the responsible federal agencies and a numbing backlog of federal approvals.""
The laws provide specific instructions for handling ""select agents,"" including dangerous samples like the anthrax and influenza virus. Wednesday was the deadline for all labs to comply with these regulations.
""Unfortunately, some of the federal agencies have not held up their end of the bargain,"" Mulcahy said.
Part of his editorial chronicled the difficulties of getting UW-Madison's paperwork approved. He said researchers were worried the school would not be certified as fully complying with the new laws by Wednesday's deadline. This might have resulted in the forced delay of their research and ultimately in loss of federal funding.
However, the deadline was extended, and all institutions that submitted the proper material on time, including UW-Madison, will be granted ""provisional authorization"" to continue work, according to Mulcahy, who views this as a step in the right direction.
Nevertheless, some researchers are still uneasy with many of the laws' strictly mandated security changes, according to Terry Devitt of UW-Madison University Communications.
""It's a concern to a lot of faculty because it's counter to the culture that's existed since forever in higher education, where you're used to working with things in a very open and inclusive environment,"" Devitt said. ""We're a public university with a capital 'P'.""
And to serve that public, Mulcahy said, researchers need to be able to get on with their work.
""We want to do what's right in protecting national security and local security,"" he said. ""But the kind of research our investigators do is for the benefit of national welfare, and the more of them that resign from doing that kind of research, the greater the potential detriment to national security and the ability to respond to bioterrorist attacks.\
