Editorial: Fentanyl is a morality tale for science journalism

Journalists and scientists share a perennial problem—the unanticipated consequences of putting their work out into the world.

This week’s issue features an article about how chemical artificial intelligence can design large-scale syntheses of the deadly drug fentanyl. Bartosz Grzybowski, who designed the chemical AI, argues that government agencies could use this technology to catch makers of illicit fentanyl, but he acknowledges that clandestine chemists could also use it to get around government restrictions.

Grzybowski’s dual-use research—that is, research that can have beneficial as well as detrimental consequences—on chemical AI brought to mind two examples of journalists that grappled with similar issues. One is a recent article from Reuters, in which reporters showed that all they needed was a web browser and $3,600 to acquire the chemicals and equipment for making $3 million worth of fentanyl.

The other example appeared in C&EN nearly 40 years ago. Reporter Rudy Baum interviewed Frank Sapienza, a chemist with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), for an article about designer drugs in the Sept. 9, 1985, issue. According to Sapienza, Baum writes, “in rough numbers a $2000 investment will yield about a kilogram of heroin worth about $1 million on the street. A similar $2000 investment in glassware and chemicals can be turned into a kilogram of 3-methyl fentanyl, currently the most common fentanyl analog being sold, worth about $1 billion (yes, billion!) on the street.”

Several chemists who were arrested for illegally making fentanyl and its more deadly analog 3-methyl fentanyl in the late 1980s and early 1990s cited the C&EN piece as their inspiration, according to John Madinger, an author and retired narcotics agent for the US Department of the Treasury. Among those C&EN readers was George Marquardt, who didn’t have any formal chemistry training and whom Madinger says the DEA once called “the most dangerous clandestine chemist” it ever encountered.

So was C&EN responsible in some way for fentanyl’s gaining a toehold in the US? And by extension, what potential consequences should journalists and scientists consider when reporting their work?

While both scientists and journalists should carefully choose what information to make public, it would be a mistake to not disclose any knowledge that has the potential for misuse.

It can be challenging to predict every instance of dual use. Madinger says Marquardt followed the chemical literature closely and was able to use his knowledge of synthetic chemistry to develop alternative routes to fentanyl. It’s unlikely the chemists who published new synthetic methodology knew that people would use it to make street drugs.

Relying on regulations as a guide would also be a mistake. That would require collaboration between scientists, government agencies, and funding groups. Yet those groups’ current relationship seems fraught and unable to adapt to the speed at which new information emerges. This collaboration could also blur lines about who is accountable to whom in the face of the heady excitement of scientific discovery and enterprising application.

Discoveries, whether scientific or journalistic, are difficult to contain. It’s better to be open, particularly in an age when nearly all information is available with a few keystrokes. Even in the mid-1980s, there was a body of public information about fentanyl and 3-methyl fentanyl. Marquardt knew about it and would have likely made these drugs anyway, even without knowing that they could potentially be so profitable. Also, if these chemists had not found the information in C&EN, others would have easily found it on the internet in the decades that followed.

It’s best that the public know from reliable sources what is out there and what potential harm it may carry. So as journalists, we will keep our focus on trustworthy journalistic practice instead of collecting secrets.

This editorial is the result of collective deliberation in C&EN. For this week’s editorial, the lead contributor is Bethany Halford.

Views expressed on this page are not necessarily those of ACS.