Trends in Science and Technology Relevant to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention: Final Report PDF
Preview Trends in Science and Technology Relevant to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention: Final Report
Life 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 PREPUBLICATION COPY Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. 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 Washington, D.C. www.nap.edu PREPUBLICATION COPY Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Life Sciences and Related Fields: Trends Relevant to the Biological Weapons Convention: Final Report THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS 500 Fifth Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20001 NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance. This project was supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation under Award 2009-12-14, Chinese Academy of Sciences, IAP—the Global Network of Science Academies, U.K. Global Partnership Programme under Award 2010072600092647, U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency under Award 7500080708, U.S. Department of State under Award SAQMMA10M2776, U.S. National Institutes of Health under Award N01-OD-4-2139 (Task Order 236), and U.S. National Academies. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organizations or agencies that provided support for the project. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data or International Standard Book Number 0-309-0XXXX-X 978-0-309-21071-3 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 97-XXXXX Additional copies of this report are available from the National Academies Press, 500 Fifth Street, N.W., Lockbox 285, Washington, D.C. 20055, (800) 624-6242 or (202) 334-3313 (in the Washington metropolitan area); Internet, http://www.nap.edu. Copyright 2011 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America PREPUBLICATION COPY Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Life Sciences and Related Fields: Trends Relevant to the Biological Weapons Convention: Final Report The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by the Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone is president of the National Academy of Sciences. The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. Charles M. Vest is president of the National Academy of Engineering. The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government and, upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg is president of the Institute of Medicine. The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy’s purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone and Dr. Charles M. Vest are chair and vice chair, respectively, of the National Research Council. www.national-academies.org PREPUBLICATION COPY Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Life Sciences and Related Fields: Trends Relevant to the Biological Weapons Convention: Final Report PREPUBLICATION COPY Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Life Sciences and Related Fields: Trends Relevant to the Biological Weapons Convention: Final Report 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 v PREPUBLICATION COPY Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Life Sciences and Related Fields: Trends Relevant to the Biological Weapons Convention: Final Report 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 PREPUBLICATION COPY Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Life Sciences and Related Fields: Trends Relevant to the Biological Weapons Convention: Final Report 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. vii PREPUBLICATION COPY Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
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