Call for bioweapons panel
Advisory panel needed to keep the bioweapons convention up to
date, the Royal Society says | By Stephen
Pincock
The United Kingdom's Royal Society is calling for the establishment of
an international scientific advisory panel to ensure that the
implementation of the United Nation's Biological and Toxin Weapons
Convention (BTWC) keeps pace with advances in the life sciences.
The United Kingdom's top science academy made the recommendation
in a paper presented today (April 19) at a meeting of the United Nations Foundation in Washington, DC. It
points out that there is currently no life sciences equivalent to
the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) or
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which back up
international agreements with access to cutting edge science.
“We believe that such support is essential, and the framework for
providing this is through the formation of an international advisory
panel that is able to keep up with the rapid pace of technological
advance in the life sciences,” Brian Eyre, chair of the Royal
Society committee on scientific aspects of international security,
said in his presentation.
The BTWC has had a troubled existence, partly because
verification procedures to ensure signatories stick to the rules are
difficult. Moves to beef up the convention have been opposed by the United States.
The proposal to form an international advisory committee has the
support of the US National Academies of Science, Eyre told The
Scientist ahead of his presentation. “We feel, and the Americans
feel, that we need a top-level advisory group that can advise the
UN… to make sure that the very latest science is available,” he
said. One idea is that national panels, such as the National Safety Advisory Committee on Biosafety in
the United States, could feed into an international group under UN
auspices, he suggested.
In its report, the Royal Society also broaches the difficult
subject of vetting proposals for research to help prevent the
development of biological weapons. The society feels science needs
to regulate itself in this area or risk such government
intervention.
“There is a need for the scientific community, governments, and
relevant agencies to be fully aware of the potential of scientific
advances both in enabling the illegal development of more lethal
weapons and in developing more effective counter measures to the use
of such weapons,” Eyre said.
Vetting may be appropriate in the case of proposals in which
there is a tangible cause for concern, but this is best done on a
case-by-case basis, and not by applying a process across the
spectrum of basic research, the society says.
Filtering out basic research that may have potential, but
unidentified, dual uses, would be “difficult and impose a burdensome
layer of bureaucracy on the research enterprise,” it says.
Commenting on the Royal Society's report, Britain's Biotechnology
and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) pointed out that
research involving biological pathogens and toxins “will continue to
be crucial in the fight to combat the diseases that these agents
cause and to improve our ability to respond to bioterrorist
attacks.”
Doug Yarrow, director of corporate science at BBSRC, told The
Scientist, “BBSRC has in place a rigorous peer review process
for research proposals, which we would expect to identify proposals
where there is a tangible cause for concern in terms of harmful
applications.”
The Royal Society's report also touches on the idea of
establishing codes of ethics for scientists. It points out that such
a move would be likely to generate red tape that could be difficult
to manage and have little value. Late last year, a UK parliamentary
science committee got a lukewarm response from the research community when
it said an international ethical code for scientists should be
developed to prevent the misuse of research by terrorists.
Links for this articleRoyal Society http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk United Nations Foundation: United Nations and Global
Security http://www.un-globalsecurity.org/events.htm A. Scott, “Bioweapons talks reopen,” The
Scientist, November 17, 2003. http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20031117/05/ J.D. Miller, “US Biosecurity board reviewed,” The
Scientist, March 8, 2004. http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20040308/01/ T. Agres, “Interpol pushes research controls,” The
Scientist, July 21, 2003. http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20030721/03/ A. Fazackerly, “Antiterror ethics code urged,” The
Scientist, November 6, 2003. http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20031106/04/ | 
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