Still, the government has taken few concrete steps over the course of the past year.

Marburger cites as a major step forward a National Academy of Sciences panel chaired by MIT scientist Gerald Fink that recommended steps to give scientists a greater voice in achieving a post-Sept. 11 balance.

The so-called Fink Report upheld the need for research oversight with an eye to national security. But it proposed establishing a committee of experts to ensure that researchers’ projects are reviewed by peer scientists—rather than lay lawmakers—before being impeded or allowed to progress.

Last month, the government implemented this recommendation by establishing the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, a panel of 25 experts that will provide oversight for institutional projects under governmental aegis.

BACK AT HOME

While scientists were mulling over universities’ concerns in Washington, a committee comprised of some of Harvard’s top scientific administrators plotted the University’s path through the government’s demands back in Cambridge.

Composed of specialists from all of Harvard’s schools pursuing biological research, the Provost’s Committee on Biodefense Research and Regulations stated emphatically that, while new regulations posed a potential threat to the University’s values, the long-term benefits of research made plodding through the regulations worthwhile.

“Federal laws and regulations, aimed at increasing safety and security...are at odds with certain long-standing University values such as openness and the equality of treatment,” the report said.

Still, research covered by the regulations “could contribute significantly to the protection of the public’s health.”

The report, formally presented to Harvard’s Faculty Council in February, suggested that the faculty of each of Harvard’s schools weigh the costs and benefits of participating in research covered by the new regulations. It also refreshed Harvard’s preexisting policy of not accepting grants imposing conditions on research participation.

But the provost’s committee did recommended that graduate students be held off projects that could be subject to last-minute, career-impeding publication restrictions.

Leaders of Harvard’s schools say that little has come of the report’s recommendations so far.

According to Bloom, the committee should have used its pulpit to make a stronger statement against the post-Sept. 11 regulations on biological research.

“I think the report missed an opportunity to emphasize the centrality of access to knowledge within the university,” he says.

Tosteson University Professor S. James Adelstein, who chaired the committee, says he thinks Bloom was expecting too much of the document.