say we can do anything we want to do regardless for the curiosity of it and understanding it. i do think there are some experiments that would better not be done. i think that would be a very rare situation, mr. chairman, particularly, i mean, you can fantasize about ridiculous and dangerous experiments for the sake and those we don't even bother with. in the realm of trying to keep up with something that is a clear and present danger of it happening in nature itself, that's the critical thing that we're dealing with here, and that's the reason why we agree so much on it and yet we all of us at the table know that this is a delicate issue. if you're doing something in an experimental fashion that you might be pushing the envelope of creating something that would give you some information but it isn't really addressing any danger, then i think that that's very ill-advised to go there, but when you have a situation where nature itself is already

doing some of the things that you're trying to stay ahead of, that's when you really have to seriously consider it. the short answer to your question, the principles of the new government wide durc policy we put out on march 29th actually put that into the consideration, so when you look at the number of experiments that you can do, look at the now seven classic experiments that if they come up you have to decide do you have a risk mi mitigation for that particular result or experiment, one of the risk mitigations very well may be don't do the experiment. >> no. >> so it really falls very nicely into the answer to your question, it is built into the new government wide durc policy, that that is in fact an option. >> i presume that this is not an area where you can draw a very clear red line, right, but in other words what you described

is the standards adopted in the policy, particularly with regard to risk mitigation, and that in a given case the decision makers might decide that in the interest of risk mitigation the research simply should not be conducted. >> it is essentially a continual evaluation of risk benefit. >> right. >> you take each individual case and you look at it and if it turns out that clearly the risk and our ability to mitigate the risk is such that it is just not worth doing. >> from a homeland security point of view why don't you talk to us a little about this and whether you think there ought to be clearer red lines here or whether this is an area of scientific inquiry where it is simply impossible to state a red line unless you see it in a particular proposal for research project of concern.

>> well, senator, i agree exactly with what doctor f auci said. i think there are some experiments that shouldn't he done and that's the intent of the compliance review group looking at the experiments and the pathogens we routinely work with in this sort of threat analysis and characterizations that we do. so we look at these very hard. we make sure that all of them are needed. we make sure we're doing them in the safest possible ways, in the appropriate facilities, but at the end of the day we recognize that national security, homeland security, needs to look at some of these different capabilities and assess what sort of threats they pose. still, we're doing them in the highest containment for the department we do most of our internal work in our facilities, the fort dietrich and the plum island facility so we're very

keen on that. >> we talked so far about the u.s. government response to this challenge of durc, dual use research of concern, but obviously scientific research is global and in this case one team in wisconsin, one team in the netherlands, so help me understand and the committee understand for the record what's this state of discussion of standards internationally? are there scientific, international scientific bodies moving to adopt standards such as the march 29th u.s. policy are different? are there national standards being adopted in individual countries throughout the world? what's happening? because obviously we're talking here about a fear and in one sense of a global pandemic so if something wrong happens in a laboratory halfway around the world, it could still affect the

lives of people here in the u.s. >> let me take a shot at that, mr. chairman. >> please. >> it is very interesting. this gets into what we refer to as the culture of responsibility, global culture of responsibility. back in the 70s when the revolution and dna technology took place globally but fundamentally here in the united states, scientists got together and tried to develop -- it is strikingly similar to the challenges that we're facing now and came up with what we ultimately have right now, the dna recombinant advisory committee, the rac as it is called, and although that only pertains when you talk specifically about government funded research here in the united states, what's happened is the fundamental principles, the codes of conduct, the culture of responsibility that was en general dered by the

discussions in the '70s without the capability of enforcing it globally essentially permeated the global approach so although we didn't have enforcement capability, it became something that was widely shared throughout the world. other countries including the netherlands right now are addressing in a very serious manner how they are going to approach this because it was one of their scientists. there is also going on in the u.k., france, places like that, so what we hope and what we envision is that as a result of this there will be a culture of responsibility that even though we don't have the carrot and the stick of funding and withdrawing funding, that these kinds of principles will actually be implemented throughout the world. we're all hoping for that and i have confidence that it will. >> good. i know that secretary napolitano and people in the department now

are developing on going relations with homeland security departments or the comparable departments around the world. is there a discussion of this particular concern in those international meetings? >> senator, there is. we have had a number of -- we have a number of bilaterals for example in s & t. we have 12 nations we do bilateral discussions with and we have had these discussions. the nations feel very similar to us but there is not all good news as far as this is concerned. i would take you back to the biological weapons convention, interesting things come out when you look at that. there is a london base verification research training and information center, vertic, and in one analysis they did a couple of years ago they discovered very few nations of the 87 that they surveyed even had laws or definitions of what a select agent is, and they

didn't have laws against developing, stock piling or storing biological material. the news doesn't get any better when you talk about export control measures, so it highlights the fact that we may be working very hard in this country and we may put into place the proper provisions, but it is important we do the international outreach, especially into some of the countries that may not have the same sense of the life science issue and the durc issue that we do. >> yes, dr.? >> can i add to the good news side of the story again. first of all, i think the h 5 n1 debate as painful as it has been has been somewhat useful internationally because people are paying attention to this issue. i think that has one good consequence is enlightenment or awakening in many parts of the world that weren't paying attention to this. the second point, at a science meeting two weeks ago when this question came up and there was concern that private foundations wouldn't follow the lead of the u.s. government in the new policy, a representative from

one of the most important science foundations stood up and said let me make clear if the u.s. government is going to pursue this policy we have to intend to follow it ourselves and i imagine that others will. the third point of good news was an article published in nature magazine yesterday in one of the most important science journaling in the world which said that the u.s. is taking an important leadership position on this durc policy and other nations should follow suit. there are some indications that maybe this will move in a direction where other people are doing similar things. >> that's encouraging. let me go to a different aspect of the durc policy which interested me which is that it requires departments and agencies to report to the white house national security staff in the next several months on their current durc projects and risk mitigation measures. the concern i want to express is that given -- put it this way.

the national security staff is probably larger than most people think but it is still relatively small for the range and responsibilities it is given, particularly those on the nse staff that work on biosecurity and bioterrorism issues and i wonder whether you have a sense of how the information is going to be used to support oversight of such research and whether any of you expect your agencies and/or the nsaab will be asked to support the oversight that the white house national security staff has charged with carrying out here. maybe i will start with you, dr. girsky. >> that would be somewhat speblg la active. we used the deliberations to better understand what has gone on with the papers.

we have been briefed on the science. we have been briefed on the policies, the issues that surfaced, and i think what's come out of the 29 march white house led effort is a good first start. what we expect is that this will continue, that this is not an end point so to speak but it is the beginning of a process that we will continue to look and try to ensure that our policies with regard to durc are as good as they can be to ensure national security but also homeland security as well as insuring scientific work goes on unfettered, so in that regard we're very hopeful. it is a reporting requirement, all departments and agencies are submitting to that. we have not come up with the next steps so to speak in trying to finalize the policy. i know this has generated, though, incredible discussions

across the agency where departments are getting together and discussing how they're handling it and we received several phone calls to see how we were dealing with our university grants program and the language that we have inserted that provides us at least a stop gap measure should it be necessary to ensure that publication of certain materials would not proceed, so this is actually been a very positive outcome i think across the government. >> good. dr. kooim, to you anticipate the nsabb may be asked to help the white house in these reviews >> we do whatever the administration asks us to do and don't do anything they don't. >> good standard. thank you for that. dr. fauci, do you want to excellent on that. >> i agree with what dr. ger steen said, if you look carefully at the policy, the 60 days to give inventory, 90 days

to determine how you do a risk mitigation, that was the first cut at making sure we know what's going on right now. i think this will be an evolving process. ultimately we will try and make sure that when you get down to the local level of the institutional biosafety committees a lot of the kinds of monitoring that will be done already essentially automatic by well-trained people. >> i agree. let me ask this question. in your testimony, dr. fauci you discuss nih funded efforts to develop a universal influenza vaccine and dr. ingalls focusing on h5n1 and i wonder whether they will lead organizations that fund vaccine research to increase the priority that you're placing on these kinds of research efforts. >> the answer is a re sounding yes. the situation, there are a

couple of ways of getting rid of this problem. one of the them i think mentioned in testimony and discussions we had is kill the chicken that have it and make sure we get rid of the reservoir. that's very difficult to do because you have countries that are not necessarily interested for economic and other reasons. the other thing is to have available counter measures that actually work and work really very well, and the idea of getting a universal influenza vaccine is not only going to be very important for seasonal influenza so we don't have to keep chasing each year getting the right combination and matching it with what is circulating out there but also it is a major, major counter measure against the emergence of a pandemic, so we are putting a considerable amount of effort and we've had encouraging scientific advances over the past just year-and-a-half to two years on understanding much better the type of immune

response that you need to induce in an individual to cover virtually all strains. we're not there yet, but this is something that we see the light at the end of the tunnel. it is always risky to predict when you're going to get a vaccine for whatever, but unlike it was a few years ago, we now see that we have the scientific mechanisms and wherewithal that we are on the road to developing a universal flu vaccine. >> that's tremendously encouraging and of coursing exactly the kind of work in a budget constrained atmosphere that i hope we'll find add gat funds for. do you want on comment on that, doctor. >> it is exciting and it would change the risk equation for everything we talked about today in the realm of influenza, so i would strongly support the efforts going on at nih on that. >> i have a final question which is the kind of question i must

say for the benefit of staff that my friend and colleague from delaware would normally ask if he were here which is incidentally i learned a lot from the testimony today and overall i am reassured by the government policies that have been put into effect and the decision making process we have and even at the far end that we have set up a process that considers and values risk mitigation and says in some cases it may be that there will be a decision that research shouldn't proceed because it is impossible to adequately mitigate the risk. the question the senator would ask i believe if he were here is if you were a member of the committee, and you probably -- well, no, i want you to assume you have the knowledge you have. is there anything more that we with our primary concern about homeland security ought to be either asking the government to

do or doing ourselves either by way of encouraging regulation or in the extreme some kind of legislation? dr. i think galsbee, why don't you start first. >> i don't see any legislative or regulatory proposal that would substantially improve the situation. i think it is very useful to have oversight like this on the development of new policy because i think there are a lot of things long the way that will be challenging. i think, for example, understanding the criteria for risk assessment and how we manage those risks is going to be very important. i think the composition and responsibilities of the nsaab will be very important, so asking questions, reasonable questions of government, about how this is working as we evolve it is very important. i think in particular paying attention to the very specific case of h5n1 transmission

research agree while the decision has been made to move onto publication for this experiment which i am concerned about i think the next issue will come up relatively soon unless there is a change in court. i think that will come up again. i think you have to pay attention to that. >> thank you. dr. kooim. >> i guess i would reiterate what tom just said that the new policy and how it is implemented is going to be very key. one thing that i think was an important role that the, it is very important you have external eyes as part of this new policy and there are inherent conflicts of interest between the funding agencies and the investigators and the investigators themselves, and what was a unique role that we played in this was we were outside the small influenza research community and we were independent of the funding agencies and we're able to look at this in a way that i think is unique and i think that's an important part to what needs to

happen. >> i agree. dr. gerstein. >> thank you, senator. i go back to the original remarks i made. i think it is a very complex issue and requires balancing outcomes. we don't want to do something precipitously that will have a d il itarious effect on the science. on the other hand, we have a very important mission in homeland security that we must ensure is well served. we do have to avoid red lines. the minute you put out a red line, somebody will figure out a way to cross it. the best way to do it is through very thinking very judgmental type bodies like the nsabb that has played an extraordinarily important role in getting us through these two papers and understanding what was going on with those papers. it really does come down to a matter of judgment. on the question of, the direct question do we need legislation right now or regulations, i would say the execing active has a lot of work to do to work

through the policies as we talked about the 29 march government policy is a first step. we are making great head way. we're continuing the deliberations. we are learning from each other. we think in dhs we have a lot of good policies we have implemented and we're sharing those to the maximum extent possible. i would like to put down a marker that says perhaps later after we've had more time working through the march 29 and adding more meat to the bones, that we come and consult with congress on this very critical issue. >> that makes sense. i hope you will do that. doctor fauci. >> i don't see any immediate legislative issue that would be appropriate at this point but i think if you ask if i were on the committee what would i do, i think what you just did today was really a very important thing. that's really very beneficial to this difficult process that we're going through, particularly with the new policy and trying to get it right and

implement it right, and the fact that an important committee like this committee and with yourself as chair are actually interested in the subject, looking at us, and we know that we'll come back to you sometime and maybe soon to just give you follow-up about how we're progressing on the implementation of this policy, so you have already done something i think that's very important and valuable to us because not only here in the united states but globally people are aware that the united states senate and this committee is interested in this problem and that adds a degree of seriousness to it which we appreciate. >> i appreciate your saying that, and that's clearly is our intention. let's agree we'll keep in touch. you know, we want the benefits of scientific inquiry. we need them. we also need to mitigate risk, and i think policy that we have now is clearly aimed at doing exactly that, so we'll follow it to see how it is going. maybe we'll come back and do one more hearing toward the end of the year.

i thank you very much for the work you did on your prepared testimony which will be entered into the record of the hearing and for the testimony this morning. we're going to leave the record of the hearing open for 15 days for any additional questions or statements. with that, i thank you very much and the hearing is adjourned. >> if the affluent can routinely and systematically buy their way out of public services and publicly provided goods, don't

they lose a stake in the public's fear and in the quality of those goods? >> mercenaries can be paid to fight wars. students can be paid to get good grades. you can pay to jump to the front of the line. sunday night at 9 on afterwards harvard professor michael sanibel on what money can't buy, part of book tv on c-span 2. here we go. welcome aboard the water taxi, every. beautiful downtown oklahoma city. i am a taken rick. i live in yukon, oklahoma. give me he ahow did i, captain rick. >> our local content vehicles explore the history and literary culture of oklahoma city, including the works of galileo at the history of science collection at oklahoma university. >> the most important part of the book was on motion. when it was public lirnd in 1632, the pope was angry that galileo broke his promise to treat it hypothetically and his

enemies joined together and the result was his trial, and this also is a copy that contains his own handwriting, so this is like being able to look over his shoulder in the months leading up to his trial. >> may 5th