Advances in science and technology, the rise of globalization, the emergence of new diseases, and the changing nature of conflict have increased the risks posed by naturally occurring and man-made biological threats. A growing acceptance of a broader definition of security since the end of the Cold War has facilitated the rise of biosecurity issues on the international security agenda. Developing strategies to counter biological threats is complicated by the lack of agreement on the definition of biosecurity, the diverse range of biological threats, and competing perspectives on the most pressing biological threats. A comprehensive definition of biosecurity that encompasses naturally occurring, accidental, and deliberate disease outbreaks can help to further research, analysis, and policymaking. Operationalizing this broad conception of biosecurity requires a taxonomy of biological threats based on a levels-of-analysis approach that identifies which types of actors are potential sources of biological thre...

Biosecurity Reconsidered: Calibrating Biological Threats and Responses

Synthetic biologists aim to generate biological organisms according to rational design principles. Their work may have many beneficial applications, but it also raises potentially serious ethical concerns. In this article, we consider what attention the discipline demands from bioethicists. We argue that the most important issue for ethicists to examine is the risk that knowledge from synthetic biology will be misused, for example, in biological terrorism or warfare. To adequately address this concern, bioethics will need to broaden its scope, contemplating not just the means by which scientific knowledge is produced, but also what kinds of knowledge should be sought and disseminated.

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Synthetic biology and the ethics of knowledge

Scientific societies have a significant opportunity to contribute to the promotion of responsible conduct of research (RCR) and to RCR education. The degree to which societies engage such opportunity spans a broad range. There are three principal ways RCR may be promoted by scientific societies. The first is through codes of conduct encouraging their membership to practice ethical research according to the tenets of these codes. The second is through specialized policies (e.g., publication practices) developed by scientific societies that help define normative behavior. Finally, societies have a role to play in creating materials and resources aimed at educating scientists and trainees in matters pertaining to proper research conduct. This article illustrates examples of each of these activities embraced by different scientific societies. The American Society for Microbiology is used as a specific example of a society that has been proactive in each of these three areas. Scientific societies need to recognize the impact they can have on promoting RCR and to expand their efforts in these three and other relevant areas. The examples provided demonstrate the components of a model for all scientific societies to follow in promoting RCR.

Scientific societies and promotion of the responsible conduct of research: codes, policies, and education.

In this article, I investigate the biopolitical economy of security as it is operating today in the United States in the context of infectious disease research. Drawing on my work with influenza researchers, I specifically show how experts have been concerned not only with the circulation of biological matter but also with the exchange of scientific information. I argue that it is a specific logic—the logic of iterability—that is at the heart of the growing concern with “sensitive information” published in scientific journals. How has the concern with sensitive information affected infectious disease research in the United States in the past few years? How has the logic of iterability reconfigured microbiological notions of the normal and the pathological? And what might an anthropological analysis of the biopolitical economy of security be able to tell us about the ways in which “life” is made a new political concern today?

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The semiotics of security: infectious disease research and the biopolitics of informational bodies in the United States.

It is noteworthy that the monumental two-volume study of military medical ethics published by the U.S. Army in 2003 paid little attention to military physicians working in detention facilities. Abu Ghraib was still a year away, so instead of focusing on what would ultimately swamp the military medical ethics literature, the army study offers a rich and comprehensive analysis of crucial clinical, political, ethical, and scientific questions. The timing was fortuitous because it allowed lawyers, philosophers, and healthcare professionals to constructively engage questions of bioethics and national security. In the years following Abu Ghraib, however, interest in dual-use technology, humanitarian intervention, weapons development, soldier-patient rights, and resource distribution would receive far less attention than medical conditions at Guantanamo Bay and would remain the purview of a relatively small group of researchers. Now is a good time to rectify this imbalance. As the following review demonstrates, the nascent field of military medical ethics holds no few challenges for enterprising bioethicists. Clinical questions that embrace patient rights in the military, experimentation, investigational drugs, and medically engineered enhancement technologies abound. Interest in battlefield bioethics is growing as U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan struggle to provide medical care to U.S. service personnel, Iraqi allies, enemy insurgents, and local civilians. Nonclinical challenges confront us when medical workers develop weapons that utilize advances in pharmacology, neurophysiology, and genetics. Medicine can also serve peace. No less than law enforcement, impartial courts, schools, and welfare agencies, medical care is crucial for failed states to rebuild. This literature, referred to as medical humanitarianism or ‘‘medicine as a bridge to peace,’’ has received scant attention from bioethicists.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0963180112000424

Military medical ethics: a review of the literature and a call to arms.

The term "dual-use" traditionally has been used to describe technologies that could have both civilian and military usage, but this term has at least three different dimensions that pose a dilemma for modern biology and its possible misuse for hostile purposes: (1) ostensibly civilian facilities that are in fact intended for military or terrorist bioweapons development and production; (2) equipment and agents that could be misappropriated and misused for biological weapons development and production; and (3) the generation and dissemination of scientific knowledge that could be misapplied for biological weapons development and production. These three different aspects of the "dual-use dilemma" are frequently confused—each demands a distinct approach within a "web of prevention" in order to reduce the future risk of bioterrorism and biowarfare. This article discusses the nature of the different perspectives and divergent approaches as a contribution to finding a scientifically acceptable global solution to...

Malcolm Dando

Papers

The Dual-Use Dilemma for the Life Sciences: Perspectives, Conundrums, and Global Solutions