Beefing up the bioweapons treaty

Abstract

Alongside support for renewed funding for microbiological research, many scientists are also backing a greater role for international agreements to control potential biological weapons. But such efforts present considerable challenges. One of Britain's leading microbiologists, Hugh Pennington at Aberdeen University, has written of the ease of obtaining agents such as anthrax. “In principle any doctor, dentist, vet, microbiology graduate or hospital microbiology lab technologist could produce it.”Even creating ‘weapons-grade’ material isn't difficult, he says. Nonetheless, other researchers believe that seeking strengthened international agreements is a way forward. Brian Heap, vice-president of Britain's science academy, the Royal Society, has written in an editorial for Science, that the current Biological Weapons Convention, signed by 144 states, offers an important opportunity.Meeting earlier this month, the fifth review meeting of the 1972 BWC offers a chance to bolster controls and gain consensus on the most effective means of reinforcing the ban. “It is not possible for any single nation to protect itself fully from the malign use of biological agents without complementary action by all other countries,” says Heap.He cites the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) as an example to follow. Now in its fourth year of full implementation, the CWC demonstrates that international instruments can be put into practice, he says. Unlike the BWC, the CWC provides an elaborate international verification system, which applies to both military facilities for chemical weapons defence and to the civil manufacturing industry, he says. “Likewise, full cooperation with the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries is essential to any verification system for an international instrument banning biological weapons.”Many researchers believe they can play their part in implementing such an instrument by providing the tools for diagnosis and detection and countermeasures, including novel vaccines and better computer models to elucidate the source and dissemination of infectious agents.However the Geneva meeting got off to a rocky start, says Oliver Meyer, an observer from the non-governmental organisation, Vertic. “Some countries such as the US are sceptical that international agreement is the way forward in tackling these weapons,” he says. But with the still bewildering anthrax attacks in the US, many still see collaboration and the BWC platform as a key way forward.