The concern is that it is much much easier for those who would cause harm to use this information than for those who would use it to create defenses. With such an asymmetry it makes sense to restrict access.
>I've got to believe that anyone skilled enough to be able to use the information
From what I've gathered from various articles is that the process described doesn't require any high level skills or facilities. Apparently it's frighteningly easy to nudge bird flu to be highly contagious in humans.
Only if the numbers are fairly comparable. If the number of "good" scientists looking to defend is much larger than the number of bad scientists, you're still probably better off publishing.
You have to guarantee 100% effective vaccines with 100% distribution.
This is false. A vaccine can effectively stop a virus with far fewer than 100% actually receiving the vaccination.
First, depending on the type of vaccine, the immunity may be communicated to other people through contact. Other people in the household, work, school, etc. are contaminated with the attenuated virus (in such a vaccination, as with the Salk polio virus).
Second, with a sufficient portion of the population immune, they act as firebreaks interfering with the transmission of the virus through the population. This is called "Herd Immunity" [1]. According to the linked article, for example, smallpox is effectively stopped with 83%-85% of the community vaccinated.
You miss the point that some people can't have the flu vaccine because of auto immune disease susceptibility. Also X percent of the population will not get the vaccination for other reasons.
So this is more like [Sophos|Symantec|Kaspersky] creating a super Windows virus then offering to print the source code in order to "further" research.
Just like with nuclear technology, we can't put this genie back in the bottle.
Just because we can do something, does that always mean we should?
No, this is not correct. As I explained elsewhere in the thread where you made the same claim:
A vaccine can effectively stop a virus with far fewer than 100% actually receiving the vaccination.
First, depending on the type of vaccine, the immunity may be communicated to other people through contact. Other people in the household, work, school, etc. are contaminated with the attenuated virus (in such a vaccination, as with the Salk polio virus).
Second, with a sufficient portion of the population immune, they act as firebreaks interfering with the transmission of the virus through the population. This is called "Herd Immunity" [1]. According to the linked article, for example, smallpox is effectively stopped with 83%-85% of the community vaccinated.
A malicious virologist already knows enough to try to replicate the experiment in his own secret lab so censoring the information will just make it hard for the good researchers to do their job.
the journal was taking the recommendations seriously and would probably withhold some information — but only if the government creates a system to provide the missing information to legitimate scientists worldwide who need it.
I'm concerned with how they might determine who is "legitimate", and who "needs it".
And beyond that, it seems silly to try to protect in this way. I've got to believe that anyone skilled enough to be able to use the information would also be skilled enough to get himself onto the staff of a "legitimate" researcher, thereby getting the information.