On Oct. 6 the Texas Attorney General rejected the Sunshine Project’s request for access to University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) records under the Texas Public Information Act. This decision prohibits the public from accessing information regarding human health and environmental damages that might result from IBC's research on biological weapons agents. The Sunshine Project has been seeking information on the committee’s membership, policies, meetings and decisions for over a year. UTMB contends these documents contain intellectual property and are so sensitive that a judge may not view them. The IBC was established under federal National Institutes of Health (NIH) Guidelines for Research Involving Recombinant DNA Molecules and the committee reviews and approves the use of biological agents on the UTMB campus. The NIH guidelines for research safety mandates public access to the minutes of IBC meetings, requires a mechanism for public commentary on IBC decisions, and encourages UTMB to open its IBC meetings to the public. Under the Texas Public Information Act, there are no exemptions that would prohibit disclosure of the material requested. Despite the NIH guidelines and Public Information Act’s provisions for information access, the Attorney General ruled in favor of UTMB and allowed a secrecy provision under the Texas Health and Safety Code to trump the state information access law. Because the IBC is designated as a “medical committee,” under the Texas Health and Safety Code the IBC can keep any documents secret and is immune to judicial subpoena. It is unclear if the federal guidelines could overrule the state law. NIH is currently investigating UTMB’s compliance with the guidelines. The Sunshine Project is an international non-governmental organization that works on biological weapons issues. The organization filed the information request to ensure the committee’s biodefense work does not threaten arms control treaties or endanger communities neighboring the biodefense research. Edward Hammond, Director of the Sunshine Project, believes that UTMB’s affinity for secrecy “will erode public confidence in the safety and security of biodefense research in Texas and across the country.” Hammond also points to the precedent that this ruling could set for future university actions, saying “UTMB could create a committee for any purpose, for example, to produce offensive bioweapons or to waste biodefense dollars and, under Texas law, the records of that committee would not be available to the public, not even to a court.”