Leading virologists have written to the president of the European Commission to urge him to clarify how laws designed to curb the proliferation of biological weapons apply to the publication of research on dangerous pathogens. The move by the European Society for Virology (ESV) comes after a Dutch court in September upheld a government order that scientists who engineered forms of H5N1 avian influenza to make them transmissible between mammals needed to seek an export permit before publishing such work.The ESV's five-page letter to Jose Manuel Bar-roso, dated 16 October, warns that the court ruling sets an unwelcome precedent. H5N1 is just one of more than 100 dangerous human, animal and plant pathogens and toxins that fall under European Union (EU) export-control legislation from 2009. This means, say the virologists, that any EU scientist who works on one of the listed pathogens could be forced to apply for an export permit before publishing their research.
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机译：领先的病毒学家已致函欧洲委员会主席，敦促他阐明旨在遏制生物武器扩散的法律如何适用于危险病原体研究的出版。欧洲病毒学协会（ESV）采取此举之前，荷兰一家法院于9月维持了一项政府命令，该命令要求设计H5N1禽流感形式的科学家使其在需要发表出口许可的哺乳动物之间传播，然后再发表此类工作。 10月16日写给乔斯·曼努埃尔·巴罗佐（Jose Manuel Bar-roso）的长达五页的信警告说，法院的裁决开创了不受欢迎的先例。从2009年起，H5N1只是受欧盟（EU）出口管制立法管制的100多种危险的人类，动植物病原体和毒素之一。病毒学家说，这意味着任何从事上述工作之一的欧盟科学家病原体在发表研究结果之前可能被迫申请出口许可证。
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