Biosafety and Biosecurity for a Changing World

Our biotechnology series continues this week with articles exploring how to ensure the safety and security of biological research, how to involve new communities in bioengineering, and the potential use of synthetic biology in conservation efforts. 

Artificial intelligence is becoming an increasingly important tool for pharmaceutical companies, which use AI in drug discovery for tasks including designing new molecules, predicting toxicity, and anticipating therapeutic benefits. But the power of the tool also generates new threats, as a team from a US company recently realized: “By simply changing their models to search for molecules with more toxicity rather than less,” writes Sam Weiss Evans, “the researchers were able to generate 40,000 molecules that were likely lethal, including the nerve agent VX and many new molecules that were predicted to be even more potent than known chemical warfare agents.”

Increasingly, even well-intentioned biological research can be used for ill, writes Evans. Protecting society from myriad new dangers requires innovative forms of governance, as well as a different way of understanding the relationship between science and the society it ostensibly serves. Evans offers ideas for constructing a new relationship between science, security, and society—one that embraces the understanding that all research is inherently dual use and must be governed accordingly.

This transformation in biosecurity—which aims to avoid the misuse of biological research—must be accompanied by new approaches to biosafety, which seeks to reduce the risks posed by working with infectious agents, toxins, and other biological hazards. David Gillum, Rebecca Moritz, Yong-Bee Lim, and Kathleen Vogel argue for breaking with traditional oversight biosafety mechanisms in favor of a proactive, risk-based approach to understanding, detecting, and mitigating biosafety risks.