Group Publishes Milk Toxin Study Over US Objection

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The National Academy of Sciences published a report on Tuesday saying the U.S. milk supply is vulnerable to being poisoned with botulinum toxin, rejecting arguments from the Health and Human Services Department that it might instruct would-be attackers.

The report, written by Lawrence Wein and Yifan Liu of California's Stanford University, outlines one way a small amount of the paralyzing poison could sicken up to 500,000 people. It recommends measures, such as better pasteurization and careful sampling, to reduce the threat.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences originally scheduled publication of the paper in late May, but withdrew its embargoed release to reporters after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services objected.

It was an unusual move and the academy recommended that this be a test case for a debate over whether studies that could pertain to biological or chemical warfare be classified in the way studies related to nuclear weapons often are.

The academy, an independent body that advises the federal government on scientific and medical matters, met with officials to discuss concerns.

"Following this meeting, the Council of the National Academy of Sciences decided to publish the article as originally accepted, accompanied by this editorial to make clear our reasons for doing so," Academy President Bruce Alberts wrote in a commentary.

All of the information in the analysis was easily available on the Internet, Alberts argued. He said open publication and debate can make the nation safer.

"Because science advances through the combination of knowledge in unexpected ways, the discoveries of each individual scientist must be made available to a wide variety of other scientists, who can then either build upon or criticize them," he added.

This "scientific free-for all," he said, almost always improves understanding.

MAKING OFFICIALS AWARE

"There is a second advantage to openness. Protecting ourselves optimally against terrorist acts will require that both national and state governments, as well as the public, be cognizant of the real dangers."

The Department of Health and Human Services disagreed.

"Our concern is that if the academy is wrong, the consequences can be dire," department spokeswoman Christina Pearson said in a telephone interview. "Anything that publicizes vulnerabilities in the system that could facilitate an attack on the food supply, that is a concern," she added.

Botulinum toxin, made by bacteria, is the cause of botulism food poisoning. It is considered a leading potential biological weapon, and milk, because it is so widely consumed, is considered a vulnerable target.

Wein and Liu set up a hypothetical scenario in which the toxin was put into milk early in the distribution process.

Because milk is pooled before being packaged and distributed, this would be an efficient way to try to poison many people, they argued.

"In the absence of any detection (i.e., every gallon of contaminated milk is consumed), the mean number of people who consume contaminated milk is 568,000," Wein and Liu wrote.

"Less than 1 gram of toxin is required to cause 100,000 mean casualties (i.e., poisoned individuals), and 10 grams poison the great majority of the 568,000 consumers."

Quick, on-site testing could foil such an attempt, and slightly better pasteurization would inactivate the toxin, they said.

Better security could help, too, they said.