The group advises the Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies about "dual use" research that could serve public health but also be a potential bioterrorism threat.

Weighing the risks

The National Institutes of Health, which funded some of the research, agreed with the panel's assessment and made non-binding recommendations to Nature and Science, the journal that planned to publish Fouchier's study, to withhold key elements of the work.

But after a series of meetings involving flu experts and officials at the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health in the United States, the NSABB reversed its decision.

The group voted unanimously to support publication of the paper by Kawaoka, considered the least controversial of the two.

And it voted 12-6 in favor of publishing a study from Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, but did not explain the concerns among some panel members about that research. Science has not given a specific date for its publication.