Synthetic biology & weapons: How soon is now?

There have been some interesting disarmament-related developments in the last week:

- In a think tank report, a group of former senior Western military commanders has called for a major change to NATO's approach to defending its members, insisting that the first-strike use of nuclear weapons is an "indispensable instrument", and claiming that there is "simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world". (Paul Rogers and Jeffrey Lewis have posted useful critiques of this report.)

- Meanwhile, opinion editorials continue to appear that reflect the call reiterated by George Shultz, Henry Kissinger and others for renewed efforts on nuclear disarmament.

- As Patrick Mc Carthy reported, the UN's Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon gingered up the Conference on Disarmament here in Geneva with his appraisal of its inability to get back to work after a decade of inactivity.

- Paul Wolfowitz, former American deputy secretary of defence and an architect of the 2003 Iraq war - and of course former World Bank boss forced to resign over an ethics scandal - has been appointed to chair a U.S. advisory board on arms control.

All of these are newsworthy developments, although right now media attention seems increasingly turned toward jitters in world financial markets, especially in the wake of a breaking trading scandal at a prominent French financial institution.

But an item of great significance was confined largely to the weekend edition newspaper features and the science pages. That is, last week a team funded by biotech entrepreneur Craig Venter announced the penultimate step toward the creation of artificial life: the world's first artificial organism.

What's the big deal?

Back in 2002, scientists reported in the journal Science that they had 'made' a virus, which they assembled from separate components, all of which they made synthetically. This was big news, but the process took two years and a large scientific team.

About 18 months later, Craig Venter and his team carried out a similar task with a different virus, but they did it in two weeks. It was much quicker this time around because commercial production of some of the virus components were now available, enabling technicians in the lab to make quicker progress, without the need to know how to recreate the initial steps - a more 'engineering-like' approach.

Venter announced he would try to do the same thing with bacteria. Bacteria - unlike viruses - are definitely 'alive'. Now, the team from the J. Craig Venter Institute has built the first bacterial genome from the raw components of DNA. It's not yet 'alive', but it's very close.

The magazine Wired was quick to point out that the news is hardly earth-shattering in its own right. But as developments occurring so closely together in time, it indicates that Venter's colleagues are close to being able to assemble a synthetic organism in a process in which it's not essential to understand all of the individual scientific steps. To paraphrase Drew Endy's useful (but very budget) short introduction to synthetic biology available on YouTube:

Synthetic biology isn't making a specific thing. It's how you make something.

What we're seeing here is another inexorable step toward moving from "the science of biology" to more of a "black-box" engineering approach in which, like the graphical front-end of computer operating systems like Windows, Linux or Mac OS X, we can perform functions without the need to understand or programme the underlying binary computer code from scratch. In other words, soon it won't be necessary to go through a decade of training to create an artificial organism, you just need sufficient knowledge and equipment to assemble it.

This has big implications for efforts to prevent the hostile use of the life sciences - biological weapons. For ten years now, I've been a participant or observer - and always a supporter - of international efforts to prevent poisoning and deliberate spreading of disease by means of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). What has always struck me is that in such an environment it's easy to get stuck in the long now: policy makers and diplomats know that big technological changes in the life sciences are on the way, and will have major ramifications for the effectiveness of the BWC regime. A cursory glance at the documents of the BWC's review conferences of the 1990s shows that many of the life science advances spoken of almost as science-fiction then, such as synthetic biology, are here and now for us today. But these advances don't come with blinking arrows or a clear guide to their implications.

How will humanity make use of synthetic biology for its benefit, while preventing harm to ourselves, each other, or to our environment? I really don't have any concerns about what Venter and his colleagues are doing, per se. They're legitimate innovators, and there's absolutely no question of any hostile intent behind what they're doing. But it's nevertheless a wake-up call.

Among others, I've argued in the past that the increasing intangibility and diffusion throughout society of biotechnological and other related developments this century will mean that orthodox disarmament and arms control processes aren't sufficient on their own to stem their risks. Increasingly, understanding and addressing intent is going to be crucial to managing the risks of misuse of the life sciences for hostile purposes as "dual-use" technology that will inevitably flow from advances like the Mycoplasma genitalium team's work becomes cheaper, easier to use, and spreads. Otherwise, regulatory frameworks for preventing hostile misuse of advances in the life science won't be able to keep up. The question is, can the BWC and related regimes like the Chemical Weapons Convention adapt to these challenges?


John Borrie

This blog post was assembled synthetically with the invaluable help of Dr. Piers Millett of the BWC Implementation Support Unit. Responsibility for any errors is entirely the author's.

Picture of MIT biologist Drew Endy's comic book, Adventures in Synthetic Biology, retrieved from the U.S. National Institutes of Health website. More info here.

BWC: 2007 Meeting of Experts

If you were in the Palais des Nations last Friday morning, you might have heard applause emanating from one of the conference chambers. That was the end of the 2007 Meeting of Experts of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). In comparison to other events in the Palais like the Human Rights Council, it was a low-key gathering. It is, however, the latest chapter in the reinvigoration of multilateral efforts to strengthen the norms against poisoning and deliberate spreading of disease.

One of the highlights of the meeting was the official launch of the new Implementation Support Unit (ISU) for the BWC. The ISU has three staff. As the ISU’s size suggests, it isn’t designed to solve the problem of biological weapons by itself. Rather, it was created to help states help themselves. They decided not to contain resources dedicated to addressing these weapons in a single monolithic institution but to keep them in the hands of governments and other international organizations, where most of the time they are dedicated to other issues, such as tackling naturally occurring infectious disease.

The ISU, however, will be key in bringing these resources together when necessary, and ensuring that they are interwoven to form a new type of fabric - one that will offer the flexibility of lycra, the strength of silk but be as soft on political sensitivities as cashmere is on skin. (Ed – Piers, I think we need to get you to the pub for a pint and a game of darts.)

Last week’s BWC meeting was an important opportunity for experts from governments, international and non-governmental organizations to meet and discuss national and regional measures and approaches to implement the provisions of the Convention. This year’s discussions had a special focus on law enforcement. While clearly not the stuff of newspaper headlines, this kind of collective work is absolutely crucial to building a norm that’s effective in preventing biological weapons, and identifying emerging risks to the regime.

By all accounts the BWC meeting was considered a success, with many substantive proposals. As importantly, there’s a renewed sense of confidence present despite past difficulties stewardship of the Convention has faced. This will help move the BWC higher up national agendas and strengthen impetus for implementing its obligations.

Although it’s clear that there’s no ‘one size fits all’ solution to implementing the BWC, a number of common understandings, themes and elements emerged during the course of the meeting. There was also a shared sense that better use could be made of the new ISU as a catalyst in better coordinating and managing implementation activities. Another important sense was that there’s a need to build national capacities – in addition to guidance and advice on enacting legislation and regulations, some states need practical assistance to be able to enforce and manage such measures.

The ideas and proposals tabled at this meeting come on top of more general discussions on national implementation held in BWC meetings in 2003 and the review of the BWC’s operation late last year. The next annual Meeting of BWC States Parties, due to be held this December, will be tasked with ‘cooking up’ these raw ingredients into something more accessible and polished that can then be ‘served’ to those states looking to improve or enhance their national arrangements or who have just joined the treaty (4 countries already have this year.)

There is an old maxim that a chef is only as good as his last meal. So if the BWC is to continue to be at the forefront, it will be critical that each and every one of its meetings add something new to the ‘stockpot’. This one certainly did, and it bodes well for December’s menu.


This is a guest blog by Dr. Piers Millett, a member of the BWC Implementation Support Unit team.


References

The BWC Implementation Support Unit’s website can be viewed here.

Video entitled "What You Should Know About Biological Warfare (1952)", available on Youtube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6NdxEmqvtk.