Poisoned Milk Report Concerns Feds

Government Wanted Article Held On Grounds It Could Aid Terrorists

(AP)  A scientific article that says terrorists could poison thousands of people through the United States' milk supply — withheld at first at the government's request — is being published despite continuing objections after the National Academy of Sciences concluded it wouldn't help attackers.

The study by Lawrence M. Wein and Yifan Liu of Stanford University discusses such questions as how terrorists could release botulinum toxin into the U.S. milk supply and what effective amounts might be.

Bruce Alberts, president of the Academy, said in an accompanying editorial that a terrorist would not learn anything useful from the article about the minimum amount of toxin to use. "And we can detect no other information in this article important for a terrorist that is not already immediately available to anyone who has access to information from the World Wide Web."

In fact, he said publication of the article by the Academy could instead be valuable for biodefense.

Science has a long tradition of publishing new information in peer-reviewed journals, providing an opportunity for other researchers to confirm findings and advance to a next step.

However, following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, some government officials have raised concerns that by obtaining biotechnology data, terrorists might be able to engineer deadlier versions of diseases.

The paper and editorial were published Tuesday on the Academy Internet site and will appear in the July 12 print edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The paper was originally planned for publication on May 30, but was withheld at the request of Stewart Simonson, assistant secretary of Health and Human Services, who contended the paper was a "road map for terrorists."

Simonson said the paper provided too much detail on potentially vulnerable areas of the milk supply, processing and distribution systems and argued that its publication "could have very serious health and national security consequences."

Health and Human Services spokesman Bill Hall said Tuesday the agency still feels the material shouldn't have been published.

"We respect the Academy's position but we don't agree with it," Hall said. The "consequences could be dire and it will be HHS, and not the Academy, that will have to deal with it."