III.d. Need of a European Biosecurity Oversight Organisation

[e-conference]

Do we need a European Biosecurity Oversight Organisation as part of a comprehensive governance framework for SB (and the life sciences more generally)?
If yes, what would its role and competencies be?

[kanzure]

What would its role be? More than anything, we have to realize as a community that biology cannot be controlled; the biosphere is vast and covers the entire planet, it is everywhere. What of the biohackers, the experimentalists, the garage setups, and the simple mutations that natural micro-evolution generates on a daily basis? So, oversight doesn't seem to be technically *feasible*. It's impossible. An interesting alternative would be analogous to proactive preventive medicine, or psychological counseling to develop ways to "cope" in a way that lets us come to terms with the 'biosingularity' (see http://biosingularity.wordpress.com/ for the etymology).

- Bryan

[arunmukhopadhyay]

In a globalising world, how a Eurorean biosecurity oversight can protect Europe from biochemical catastrophs? Can EU pursuade its transatlantic partner to get its bioshield programmes reviewed by a UN team?

[kanzure]

You may be interested in http://lifeboat.com/ if you want bioshields.

- Bryan

[markus.fischer]

An EBOO would be benefitial in a number of ways:

1. It would reassure the public that biosafety and biosecurity concerns are addressed
2. It would avoid fragmentation of biosecurity efforts into national initiatives by the member states, and instead centralize these (synthetic biology is an international field, and should be addressed at the highest possible organizational level)
3. It would provide legal security to the industry, by defining clear compliance rules

It is important that at the basis, such an organization has an optimistic view of synthetic biology: It should operate on the premise that the potential of synthetic biology for improving quality of life and economic development is high. Aspects of biosafety and biosecurity need to be addressed, but not because synthetic biology poses so many safety and security issues, but because a clear regulation and careful impact analysis can open the road to full leverage of the potential of synthetic biology.

[kanzure]

Markus, how would EBOO provide true biosafety when we can't even defend our own bodies with anything more than our simple immune systems?

- Bryan

[markus.fischer]

[quote="kanzure"]Markus, how would EBOO provide true biosafety when we can't even defend our own bodies with anything more than our simple immune systems?
[/quote]

Well, I think we can do more than just rely on the immune system. In fact we do: Look at epidemiology, quarantine, containment, drug and vaccine research, look at the quick and strong scientific response to SARS, look at the rapidly created tests for BSE or the vastly improved tests for HIV.

On a technical level, there are many things that can be done to make synbio safer. And an EBOO would be a good starting point to create the right administrative environment to facilitate such measures (and balance them with other interests, of course; after all, they shouldn't bring synbio to a grinding halt).

[kanzure]

"Well, I think we can do more than just rely on the immune system. In fact we do: Look at epidemiology, quarantine, containment, drug and vaccine research, look at the quick and strong scientific response to SARS, look at the rapidly created tests for BSE or the vastly improved tests for HIV."

Yes, but who gets the treatments? Who gets the protection and gets to be 'biosecure' ? An EBOO could best help everyone by publishing biosecurity-mechanisms for personalized immune systems as soon as possible. If you don't make it freely accessible (the knowledge, and information on how to go about attaining the right tools), isn't that a form of eugenics? Or of widening the gap between rich/poor? etc. I think those arguments are well-known, so I'm not going to go in depth with them here.

- Bryan

[scott.mohr]

____ Generally speaking, Marcus Fischer has made the most sensible comments on this topic, viz.,
____ "It is important that at the basis, such an organization has an optimistic view of synthetic biology: It should operate on the premise that the potential of synthetic biology for improving quality of life and economic development is high. Aspects of biosafety and biosecurity need to be addressed, but not because synthetic biology poses so many safety and security issues, but because a clear regulation and careful impact analysis can open the road to full leverage of the potential of synthetic biology."
____ Even the term "Oversight" has a slightly off-putting, Big-Brotherish sound to it. That term stems, of course, from the idea that top-down approaches are the best way to deal with problems of public safety. Unless regulation of SB stems from broad-based support on the part of the "grass-roots" community, however, it will simply become yet another dreary bureaucratic activity that hard-working researchers and entrepreneurs will regard as akin to the barnacles on a ship. I see Marcus Fischer's numbered points in support of an EBOO as logical outgrowths of bottom-up concerns for managing an embryonic field in such as way as to enable it to develop successfully. In other words, an ultimately functional regulatory structure should emerge organically from the needs of the community of practitioners **acting in their own best interests with clear recognition that over the long haul, those interests are congruent with those of the broader public.**
____ At the present time, the progress in setting up effective screening for potentially harmful sequences on the part of DNA synthesis companies demonstrates this principle. Clearly the companies want to stay in business, increase their sales volume and be regarded by the public at large as good corporate citizens. Thus it has been in their interest to develop, implement and publicize the sequence screening. This is bottom-up regulation at its best.
____ As for a "European" versus "national" regulatory bodies to help disseminate and enforce such organically grown biosecurity policies and procedures, I have to say as a non-European that the amalgamated system certainly sounds preferable to one that would, for example, have Luxembourg operating its own agency... In the US we learn as school children that before the US constitution went into effect in 1789, the loosely drawn "Articles of Confederation" among the 13 colonies led to such counter-productive activities as customs duties imposed on inter-colony commerce. With the advent of a strong central government, such silliness was eliminated. Surely the concerns for biosecurity in SB from Ireland to Cyprus and Spain to Finland are fundamentally the same... It's also worth bearing in mind that scientists and engineers frequently cross national boundaries to find the best jobs. Having different regulations govern safe and secure practices for SB among the members of the EU (if we define "European" that way) makes no sense in this context -- and would invite disrespect for those regulations on the part of the principal regulatees.
____ Finally, I want to comment on Bryan (kanzure)'s remark that "biology cannot be controlled," which he uses to dismiss any attempt to evolve a regulatory structure for biosecurity in the SB area. Also Arun Mukopadhayay raises the point that the US government has been uncooperative in efforts to have its "bioshield" programs reviewed by UN authorities. To that I might add that many skeptics firmly believe that Biopreparat (the former, **massive** Soviet bioweapons program) is not dead -- a view reinforced by the accounts of inspectors who have attempted to assess potential biowarfare activities currently underway in Russia. Clearly these are all factual realities. Nevertheless, I don't think they are grounds for dismissing efforts to build a structure of biosecurity awareness, rules and procedures that can function on a global basis. Certainly biology cannot be **completely** controlled globally even though **every day** our knowledge and understanding of biology increase by leaps and bounds. But the same thing is true of physics: for example, thanks to Newton, we understand and predict the details of the earth's orbital behavior; no one, however, can sanely propose that at present, we could (or should!) control that behavior. But we do exploit Newton's laws of motion to launch satellites and space probes. Similarly, we use our knowledge of biology to vaccinate against diseases, and even in cases like smallpox and polio to eradicate them as current threats to human health. We can control some biology. As for benighted policies on the part of one miserable US administration, it's worth noting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ("CDC") tend to operate outside any narrowly national or political confines and act as a de facto international agency to work on detecting, analyzing and combating infectious diseases worldwide. In this the CDC collaborates extensively with research scientists and public health workers from many nations.