Abstract
Research on pathogenic organisms is crucial for medical, biological and agricultural developments. However, biological agents as well as associated knowledge and techniques, can also be misused, for example for the development of biological weapons. Potential malicious use of well-intended research, referred to as “dual-use research”, poses a threat to public health and the environment. There are various international resources providing frameworks to assess dual-use potential of the research concerned. However, concrete instructions for researchers on how to perform a dual-use risk assessment is largely lacking. The international need for practical dual-use monitoring and risk assessment instructions, in addition to the need to raise awareness among scientists about potential dual-use aspects of their research has been identified over the last years by the Netherlands Biosecurity Office, through consulting national and international biorisk stakeholders. We identified that Biorisk Management Advisors and researchers need a practical tool to facilitate a dual-use assessment on their specific research. Therefore, the Netherlands Biosecurity Office developed a web-based Dual-Use Quickscan (www.dualusequickscan.com), that can be used periodically by researchers working with microorganisms to assess potential dual-use risks of their research by answering a set of fifteen yes/no questions. The questions for the tool were extracted from existing international open resources, and categorized into three themes: characteristics of the biological agent, knowledge and technology about the biological agent, and consequences of misuse. The results of the Quickscan provide the researcher with an indication of the dual-use potential of the research and can be used as a basis for further discussions with a Biorisk Management Advisor. The Dual-Use Quickscan can be embedded in a broader system of biosafety and biosecurity that includes dual-use monitoring and awareness within organizations. Increased international attention to examine pathogens with pandemic potential has been enhanced by the current COVID-19 pandemic, hence monitoring of dual-use potential urgently needs to be encouraged.
Highlights
Research on pathogenic organisms is crucial for innovations in the medical, biological and agricultural fields
World Health Organization (WHO) recently published a report on the findings of an international horizon scan on dual-use research of concern in the life sciences (WHO, 2021) and the International Health Regulations (IHR) benchmarks describe countries need to develop documents for dual-use research in order to achieve a demonstrated capacity in biosafety and biosecurity (WHO, 2019)
Several countries developed national guidelines on dual-use and responsible science (German Ethics Council, 2014; DURC Policy, 2014a; PHAC, 2018), including the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences’ (KNAW) report Improving biosecurity, Assessment of dual-use research (KNAW, 2013) and Guidelines for researchers on dual-use and preventing misuse of research published by a collaboration of five Flemish universities (Flemish Interuniversity Council, 2017)
Summary
Research on pathogenic organisms is crucial for innovations in the medical, biological and agricultural fields. Increased awareness of biosecurity and dual-use among researchers is crucial and dual-use potential should be assessed (KNAW, 2009; iGEM Team Bielefeld, 2015; EBRF, 2016; NASEM, 2018; IWG, 2020; IWG, 2021). This was one of the conclusions of the 2004 report Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism of the National Research Council (NRC, 2004). The current COVID-19 pandemic leads to even more international attention to examine pathogens with pandemic potential (Grange et al, 2021) and causes Gain-of-Function experiments to be reconsidered (Imperiale and Casadevall, 2020) This highlights the urgent need for better assessment of potential dual-use research of concern (Jonas et al, 2020). A need for practical dual-use monitoring and risk assessment instructions, in addition to the need to raise awareness among scientists about potential dual-use aspects of their research was internationally recognized by amongst other the Global Health Security Agenda action package Biosecurity and Biosafety (GHSA, 2020), the international working group on strengthening the culture of biosafety and biosecurity (IWG, 2021), and the Global Biosecurity Dialogue (NTI, 2021)
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