Improving oversight: development of an educational module on dual-use research in the West

Abstract

The ‘dual-use’ potential of life science research has been a topic of increasing attention in recent years as part of the growing concern about the inadvertent or deliberate spread of disease. While ‘dual-use’ functions as an umbrella phrase, one sense of it refers to the possibility that ‘the generation and dissemination of scientific knowledge […] could be misapplied for biological weapons development and production.’ Major studies of this sense of the term include the US National Research Council (NRC) and Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) report Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism, the NRC’s Globalization, Biosecurity, and the Future of the Life Sciences, and the British Royal Society’s Scientific and Technological Developments Relevant to the Biological & Toxin Weapons Convention. Echoing sentiments elsewhere, these analyses have underscored the breadth and scale of challenges in preventing the destructive application of the life sciences.