Adequate regulation, a stop‐gap measure, or part of a package?

Abstract

The potential misuse of biological knowledge and research by military forces or terrorists is an increasing concern for both security experts and policy‐makers. In addition to existing biosafety and biosecurity regulations that are aimed at reducing the public health and environmental risks of biological research, policy‐makers feel that further measures are needed to prevent new techniques and knowledge from being used by criminals or terrorists. One proposed measure that has gained considerable support over the past few years is voluntary self‐governance by the scientific community and, in particular, codes of conduct. In this article, I consider how the debate on codes of conduct for bioscientists began, and outline the various ways in which different stakeholders have supported such codes. Shifting the focus from policy to practice, I explore how effective such codes for bioscientists would be as a regulatory measure, drawing from experiences of regulating recombinant DNA research in the USA—another self‐governance regime. Finally, having noted a number of limitations with self‐governance and codes of conduct, I explore why so much emphasis is currently placed on codes of conduct in the discussions on preventing misuse, and argue that there are at least three possible interpretations. The debate about codes of conduct for bioscientists was initiated in November 2001, when the US government endorsed “a solid framework for bioscientists in the form of a code of ethical conduct that would have universal recognition” (Bush, 2001). A few weeks later, John Bolton, former US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, further endorsed codes at the Fifth Review Conference of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), when he said that “a professional code of conduct for scientists working with pathogenic microorganisms [is critical and timely]” (Bolton, 2001). In December 2005, the states that were party to the BTWC …