Table Of ContentLife Sciences and Related Fields:
Trends Relevant to the
Biological Weapons Convention
Life Sciences and Related Fields: Trends Relevant to the
Biological Weapons Convention: Final Report
Committee on Trends in Science a nd Technology Relevant to the
Biological Weapons Convention: A n International Workshop; National
Research Council; in cooperation with Chinese Academy of Sciences,
IAP—The Global Network of Science Academies; International Union of
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; International Union of Microbiological
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Life Sciences and Related Fields: Trends Relevant to the Biological Weapons Convention: Final Report
Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Life Sciences and Related Fields: Trends Relevant to the Biological Weapons Convention: Final Report
Life Sciences and Related Fields: Trends Relevant to the
Biological Weapons Convention
Committee on Trends in Science and Technology Relevant to the Biological
Weapons Convention: An International Workshop
Board on Life Sciences
Division on Earth and Life Studies
In cooperation with
Chinese Academy of Sciences
IAP—the Global Network of Science Academies
International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
International Union of Microbiological Sciences
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS
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COMMITTEE ON TRENDS IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY RELEVANT TO
THE BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS CONVENTION:
AN INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP
RODERICK J. FLOWER (Chair), Professor of Biochemical Pharmacology, William
Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom
HERNAN CHAIMOVICH, Superintendent General, Butantan Foundation; Professor of
Biochemistry, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
NANCY D. CONNELL, Professor of Infectious Disease, University of Medicine and
Dentistry of New Jersey, Newark, NJ, USA
ANDRZEJ GORSKI, Professor of Medicine and Immunology, The Medical University of
Warsaw; Vice President, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
Li HUANG, Director-General, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Beijing, China
MAXWELL OTIM ONAPA, Deputy Executive Secretary, Uganda National Council for
Science and Technology, Kampala, Uganda
MOHAMED IQBAL PARKER, Professor in Medical Biochemistry, University of Cape
Town; Director, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology,
Cape Town, South Africa
ANDREW PITT, Chair of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Chemical Biology, School of
Health and Life Sciences, Ashton University, Birmingham, United Kingdom
RALF TRAPP, Consultant, CBW Arms Control and Disarmament, France
LLOYD WHITMAN, Deputy Director, Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology
U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, USA
STAFF
KATHERINE BOWMAN, Study Director and Senior Program Officer, Board on Life
Sciences
KATHRYN HUGHES, Program Officer, Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology
JO L. HUSBANDS, Scholar/Senior Project Director, Board on Life Sciences
SAYYEDA AYESHA AHMED, Senior Program Assistant, Board on Life Sciences
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vi
BOARD ON LIFE SCIENCES
KEITH R. YAMAMOTO (Chair), University of California, San Francisco, California
BONNIE L. BASSLER, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
VICKI L. CHANDLER, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Palo Alto, California
SEAN EDDY, HHMI Janelia Farm Research Campus, Ashburn, Virginia
MARK D. FITZSIMMONS, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Chicago,
Illinois
DAVID R. FRANZ, Midwest Research Institute, Frederick, Maryland
LOUIS J. GROSS, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee
RICHARD A. JOHNSON. Arnold and Porter, Washington, D.C
CATO T. LAURENCIN, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington,
Connecticut
BERNARD LO, University of California, San Francisco, California
ROBERT M. NEREM, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia
CAMILLE PARMESAN, University of Texas, Austin, Texas
MURIEL E. POSTON, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York
ALISON G. POWER, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
MARGARET RILEY, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts
BRUCE W. STILLMAN, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York
CYNTHIA WOLBERGER, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore,
Maryland
MARY WOOLLEY, Research!America, Alexandria, Virginia
STAFF
FRANCES E. SHARPLES, Director
JO L. HUSBANDS, Scholar/Senior Project Director
JAY B. LABOV, Senior Scientist/Program Director for Biology Education
KATHERINE BOWMAN, Senior Program Officer
MARILEE K. SHELTON-DAVENPORT, Senior Program Officer
INDIA HOOK-BARNARD, Program Officer
KEEGAN SAWYER, Associate Program Officer
ANNA FARRAR, Financial Associate
CARL-GUSTAV ANDERSON, Program Associate
SAYYEDA AYESHA AHMED, Senior Program Assistant
ORIN LUKE, Senior Program Assistant
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PREFACE
In 2006 the Royal Society, in cooperation with the International Council for Science, the
InterAcademy Panel on International Issues (now the IAP—the Global Network of
Science Academies) and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, organized a workshop
that surveyed trends in science and technology (S&T). The objective was to provide an
th
independent contribution from the international scientific community to the 6 Review
Conference of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) that was held in
December of that year.
At the time I was serving as chair of the Royal Society standing Committee on Scientific
Aspects of International Security and so became chair of the S&T trends workshop.
Among the Iessons we learned from that workshop were that:
• Inviting researchers to describe the “state of the science” in their fields was a
useful and productive strategy. Subsequent discussions drew out the potential
implications of these advances and remaining challenges for the BWC.
• Input by technical experts from government and the policy community who
engaged with the research scientists at the workshop was extremely valuable.
• The provision of adequate time for small-group discussion was important to
enable participants to explore topics in greater depth and detail than was
possible in plenary sessions.
• International scientific organizations can make a genuine contribution by
assisting the BWC States Parties to gain a greater appreciation of the advances
taking place in the life sciences and related fields, including the increasingly
global nature of the research enterprise.
We applied the experience we garnered from this meeting when we embarked in
organizing the second international workshop held in Beijing in November 2010. Again,
this took the form of a partnership between several international scientific organizations
and national academies.
The three main themes that emerged from this meeting resonate strongly with my own
experience as an active researcher. Take the convergence of disciplines, for example;
the major therapeutic advances in my own area (the pharmacology of inflammation)
have come from the application of biotechnology, and in particular protein engineering,
to the design of anti-inflammatory drugs. The ‘biologics’, as these agents are known,
have provided relief to countless sufferers from arthritis and other debilitating diseases.
In fact, the very title of my own department – Biochemical Pharmacology – was originally
chosen to indicate the growing conjunction of two life sciences.
Scientific research has always had a strongly international nature. My own group
collaborates with laboratories around the world to take advantage of complementary
skills and training facilities that other laboratories can offer. Whilst such endeavors were
once dependent upon personal visits or postal exchanges, the advances in
communications technologies now enable us to share data and discuss our work in
virtual as much as actual laboratory settings. The many similar international efforts
described in the Beijing workshop therefore rang true to me as capturing the reality of a
genuinely global scientific enterprise.
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