I want to make you aware of an opportunity to view a live webcast of a 2-day international symposium to address issues surrounding H5N1 avian influenza research organized and hosted by the Royal Society in London April 3-4, 2012. The ASM, which has provided several key forums on this issue, is a cosponsor of this meeting.

The live webcast of the 2-day symposium will feature all speakers’ talks and their slides, open-floor discussions and news conferences. You can access the webcast at http://www.voiceprompt.co.uk/royalsociety/030412/. The webcast will start on Tuesday April 3 at 9:00 a.m. BST (4:00 a.m. EDT). Please note there is a 5-hour time difference between London and the East Coast of the U.S. After the symposium the entire video of the meeting will be made available on demand online for 12 months.

As background, the journals Nature and Science received papers in 2011 from two teams of researchers showing that the H5N1 virus could be genetically manipulated in ferrets, a model organism for influenza, to mutate into a form that might spread rapidly among a human population through aerosol transmission. Various national and international bodies, including the US National Security Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), have expressed concern that the safety and security of both research workers and wider society need to be considered before work of this kind is published in full. Set against this is the basic principle that scientists should operate openly and publish their findings. This conference will discuss virus research and the safety, security, and ethical aspects from the perspectives of participating researchers, publishers, policymakers and funders.

Speakers will include Paul Keim, Chair of the NSABB; Bruce Alberts, editor-in-chief of Science; Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief of Nature; and the researchers whose papers sparked the controversy, Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, and Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. A full copy of the program can be found online at http://royalsociety.org/events/2012/viruses/.

The symposium is organized by the Royal Society in partnership with the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Foundation for Vaccine Research with support from the American Society for Microbiology, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Fondation Mérieux, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Institut Pasteur, and the Society for General Microbiology.

A previous symposium on H5N1 research issues held by the ASM at its annual biodefense meeting in February 2012 can be watched online at http://www.asmbiodefense.org/index.php/program-information/nsabbs-recommendations-for-h5n1-research.