Making viruses in the lab deadlier and more able to spread: an accident waiting to happen
Tatyana Novossiolova and Malcolm Dando.
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
This is a short article from a veteran of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) discussions that occur mainly in Geneva. Malcolm Dando is at the University of Bradford’s Department of Peace Studies and is author of a widely known book in the field “Bioterror and biowarfare: A beginner’s guide”. Tatyana Novossiolova is a Wellcome Trust Doctoral Researcher at the Bradford Disarmament Research Centre at the University of Bradford, UK. The piece is interesting precisely because the authors offer a different perspective while being highly versed in the vocabulary of microbiology. It is written in reaction to the publication of Kawaoka’s paper on a 1918-like virus.
The opening statement is worth citing in full “All rights come with limits and responsibilities. For example, US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously noted that the right to free speech does not mean that one can falsely shout "fire" in a crowded theatre.”
They make the analogy with the nuclear industry and cite Charles Perrow’s classic account of the Three Mile Island disaster, not the sort of reading that comes across the screen of most virologists. The conclusion was that the very structure and organization of nuclear power plants made them accident-prone. Perrow considered it a “normal” accident, which is a variant of an accident waiting to happen. He has a far more recent piece on the Fukushima accident. Dando writes “Gain-of-function research in the life sciences is another example of the inevitable failure of overly complex, human-designed systems with multiple variables.”
For the record, Malcolm Dando signed the FVR sponsored letter to Manuel Barroso and the CWG statement.
References
Malcolm R. Dando (2006), Bioterror and Biowarfare: A beginner’s guide, Oneworld Publications. ISBN-10: 1851684476
A very sobering and pertinent paragraph from this book is:
“unlike the international community of physical scientists, biologists have little tradition of taking an interest in security issues. Therefore the people who should really be able to give the best advice to the public and to politicians are still hardly aware of their grave responsibilities. A key issue for civil society is how to make the whole life sciences community around the world more aware and willing to bring their expertise to bear on the issue of preventing the misuse of their science.”
Charles Perrow (1982), "The President’s Commission and the Normal Accident", in Sils, D., Wolf, C. and Shelanski, V. (Eds), Accident at Three Mile Island: The Human Dimensions, Westview, Boulder, pp.173–184.
Charles Perrow (November/December 2011 vol. 67 no. 6). "Fukushima and the inevitability of accidents". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. pp. 44–52.
