The Misuse of Biology
Research in biology and biomedicine is essential to global health. It provides insights into disease agents, their transmission and how we can treat them.
But these same insights can also be abused.
Trends in bioscience:
- increasing pace of advances in bioscience
- increasing convergence of biology and biomedicine with chemistry, engineering, mathematics, computer science and information theory
- increasing diffusion of capacity in biology and biomedicine around the world, particularly in emerging economies such as China and India
- increasing opening up of science with new tools like wikis, blogs and microblogs altering how information is gathered, handled, disseminated and accessed; and amateur communities, scientific outreach and educational toys increasing access to hardware for wetwork in the life sciences
The trends in bioscience are making it easier to develop biological weapons. Risk assessments by the global network of science academies conclude that scientific advances in biology and biomedicine are significantly eroding technological barriers to acquiring and using biological weapons: iapbwg.pan.pl (www)
Emerging Research Areas with High Misuse Potential
Not all research is of concern. Various efforts have been made, particularly in the United States, to characterise biological research with particularly high misuse potential.
Examples identified of such ‘dual use research of concern’ include experiments that:
- manipulate the pathogenicity, virulence, host-specificity, transmissibility, resistance to drugs, or ability to overcome host immunity to pathogens
- synthesize pathogens and toxins without cultivation of microorganisms or using other natural sources
- identify new mechanisms to disrupt the healthy functioning of humans, animals and plants
- develop novel means of delivering biological agents and toxins
Early high profile experiments that raised concern:
- made mousepox more deadly (2001)
- synthesized poliovirus from scratch (2002)
- reconstructed the extinct 1918 flu virus (G) (2005)
More recently, entire fields of biological research are raising concern. These include:
- ‘gain-of-function’ studies where potentially pandemic pathogens are artificially mutated and ‘enhanced’ to create even more potent strains of some of the world’s deadliest diseases
- synthetic biology which aims to engineer biology, and which will likely make it possible to create dangerous viruses from scratch in the near future
- neurobiology, which may improve the operational performance of troops through neuropharmacological agents that enhance functions like perception, attention, learning, memory, language, thinking, planning and decision-making; or which may degrade enemy performance through incapacitating biochemical agents or so-called ‘non-lethal’ weapons
Security Risks
While there are significant risks of small-scale bioterrorism attacks, the likelihood that scientific advances will be used to ‘enhance’ these attacks in relatively low.
The most significant security threat from the misuse of advances in bioscience comes from sophisticated biological attacks from professional and well-resourced institutions like national militaries.
New and emerging infectious diseases, and diseases intentionally created in laboratories, are considered some of the biggest threats to national security.
Over half the world’s population is now crowded into urban areas. This makes the modern city an ideal breeding ground for disease that can quickly spread across borders and cause a public health emergency.
These emergencies put intense pressures not only on health services, but on society as a whole. What begins as a health problem can become a social, cultural or economic crisis, potentially sparking civil and political unrest.
Q&A
This interview covers:
- the threat of bioweapons use by states and national militaries
- the blurred line between offensive and defensive programmes
- the terrorist threat
- the impact of emerging technologies on the threat of bioweapons