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BIOSECURITY
Global Catastrophic Biological Risks (GCBRs) like bioterrorism, biological weapons, and pandemics pose a substantial existential threat to humanity. With technological progress, it looks increasingly plausible that it will become easier to manufacture extremely dangerous pathogens (whether deliberately or accidentally). The good news is that we can prepare for the next pandemic, with potential technological solutions that make it easier to prevent and treat infections, and implement policy solutions that ensure countries and institutions respond better to pandemics. However, very little of this work is focused on the worst-case risks, so work to prevent potentially existential pandemics is highly neglected.
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The international body responsible for the continued prohibition of bioweapons (the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention) has an annual budget of just £1.1 millon, which is less than the average McDonald’s restaurant
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Biotechnology is being rapidly democratised: the Human Genome Project (1990-2003) cost at least $500 million to complete but genome sequencing can now be done for under $1,000.
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A reasonable forecast that H5N1 causes a pandemic as bad as or worse than COVID-19 beginning in the next year is ~4%, which means the expected cost in terms of potential harms to the U.S. is at least $640 billion.
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Between 2005 and 2012, there were 1,059 release reports with 3,780 potential worker exposures recorded on the CDC's database on releases of select agents and toxins which have been determined to have the potential to pose a severe threat to both human and animal health, to plant health, or to animal and plant products
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According to some accounts, the first record of a biological warfare can be found in an epidemic of tularemia that plagued the Eastern Mediterranean in the 14th century BC.​
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Below are links to a number of resources to help you explore biosecurity and learn about how we can contribute to understanding and managing it as a cause area for concern.
Introduction to Biosecurity
Here are some useful introductions to the topic of biosecurity which survey the history and present-day state of biosecurity issues and pandemic preparedness.
General reading:
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'Reducing global catastrophic biological risks' — 80,000 Hours' problem profile explaining Global catastrophic biological risks (GCBRs) as a cause area and what can be done to manage these risks.
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'Biotechnology and biosecurity'​ — reproduced chapter from Global Catastrophic Risks (2008), this text describes biological weapons and treaties in history, biotechnological challenges, and approaches to address these risks.
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'A Biosecurity and Biorisk Reading+ List' — selected readings (including courses, videos, and podcasts) to help you get oriented in biosecurity and biorisk reduction.
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Malcolm R Dando, Bioterror and Biowarfare: A Beginner's Guide (2006)
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Global Biodefense — News site on preparedness and countermeasures for health security threats from emerging infectious diseases and pandemics.
Sources of Biorisk
Pathogen infections can threaten human, animal and plant life in many ways. The following sub-headings explore the the probabilities and mechanisms which could lead to a global catastrophe.
Visual Capitalist: "As humans have spread across the world, so have infectious diseases. Even in this modern era, outbreaks are nearly constant, though not every outbreak reaches pandemic level as COVID-19 has."
Natural pandemics
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'Ecology of zoonoses: natural and unnatural histories' — research paper concluding that "[m]ore than 60% of human infectious diseases are caused by pathogens shared with wild or domestic animals"; could factory farming and animal agriculture increase the likelihood of a bad, or even catastrophic, pandemic?
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Biotechnology, biowarfare and bioterrorism
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'Engineering the Apocalypse' — podcast episode about the looming danger of a man-made pandemic caused by an artificially-modified pathogen, the risk of which is argued to be far higher and nearer-term than almost anyone realises (5-minute written summary also available here).
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COVID-19 is a dress rehearsal for potentially much worse and more dangerous viruses that will eventually happen in the future.
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'The Germy Paradox' — series of blog posts which addresses the question: “If biological weapons are as cheap and deadly as is everyone seems to fear, then where are they?”
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'Point of View: A transatlantic perspective on 20 emerging issues in biological engineering' — horizon scanning article which identified 70 potential issues with bioengineering, and then used an iterative process to prioritise 20 issues considered to be emerging, to have potential global impact, and to be relatively unknown outside the field of biological engineering.
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'What is the likelihood that civilizational collapse would directly lead to human extinction (within decades)?' — less directly-related to GCBRs but read the section on a scenario causing 99.99% population loss, infrastructure damage, and climate change (e.g. a global war where biological weapons and nuclear weapons were used).
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Mitigation & Governance
The field of biosecurity policy is complicated, sensitive and nuanced, especially due to the confidentiality of information, which makes it more difficult to draw confident conclusions based on the impressions you might get based on publicly available information. This section takes a look at the strategies and approaches being proposed, researched, developed and implemented to mitigate GCBRs.
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General risk management​
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'List of Lists of Concrete Biosecurity Project Ideas' — collection of projects to improve biosecurity infrastructure, including implementation of early detection systems, strengthening of the Biological Weapons Convention, research into pandemic refuge bunkers, development of emergency vaccines and more.
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'Five ways to stop a bird->mink->human H5N1 pandemic' — proposed solutions to prevent a bird flu pandemic in humans through the abolition of mink farming, tighter regulation, and cultivation and promotion of faux fur and lab-grown replacements.
Technical progress
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'Andy Weber on rendering bioweapons obsolete and ending the new nuclear arms race' — podcast episode which posits that there is an overwhelming case to increase our investment in two new technologies that could dramatically reduce the risk of bioweapons, and end natural pandemics in the process: mass genetic sequencing and mRNA vaccines.
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'A Framework for Technical Progress on Biosecurity' — post which looks at the development of biosecurity technology through the lens of five goals (making the relevant technologies fast, generalised, cheap, robust, and scalable), grouping them into six core categories of purpose (monitoring, forensics, barriers, diagnostics, prophylactics, and therapeutics).
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'Technologies to Address Global Catastrophic Biological Risks' — paper published by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security to highlight promising classes of technologies, including an assessment of their potential relevance to reducing GCBRs.
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'Information Hazards in Biotechnology' — paper on managing risks that arises from the dissemination of (true) information that may cause or enable harm.
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Policy and institutional decision-making​
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'The Apollo Program for Biodefense – Winning the Race Against Biological Threats' — Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense's report which acknowedges the existential threat from pandemics and makes ambitious recommendations which could put an end to the era of pandemic threats by 2030.
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'A Global Early Warning System for Pandemics' — 2021 report which seeks to catalyse the mobilisation of a more rapid and nimble early warning system with robust global coordination and, in doing so, outlining principles to help guide decision-making, highlight key considerations for success, and offer initial steps and immediate actions for realising such a coordinated global system.
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'Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism' — the National Research Council's 2004 report which led to the founding of the U.S. government's National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) and set the framework for current day policies and oversight efforts; one of its key recommendations was to refrain from attempting to regulate scientific publishing and instead trust scientists and journals to screen their papers for security risk.
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European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control: 'Influenza pandemic preparedness' — webpage of EU agency to strengthen Europe's defences against infectious diseases, with information on national and intergovernmental measures to monitor and assess risks and plan for potential incidents.
Scepticism & Uncertainty
As modelling epidemiology and pathology is a very complex task, it is difficult to predict whether a biorisk threatens humanity on a global catastrophic and existential scale, or will simply fall short of it. In turn, there is disagreement on how to strike a balance in dedicating time, effort and money to prevent both eventualities. In addition, biosecurity is a sensitive cause area due to the risks presented by information hazards.
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'Dual-Use and Infectious Disease Research' — journal article on the “dual-use dilemma” (when scientific research or technology has the capacity to help or harm humanity) which also examines ethical issues in attempting to trade off the risks and benefits and discusses governance strategies to ensure best practices in the field.
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'The Ethical Issues of Dual-Use and the Life Sciences' — another article on dual-use research with focus on historical examples and recent policy developments (mainly in the U.S.), as well as consideration of the term 'experiments of concern', its limitations and the important variations in the manner this term is conceived across the globe.
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'Horsepox synthesis: A case of the unilateralist’s curse?' — framed within the context of the controversial reconstitution of an extinct virus, this post looks at the unilateralist's curse, i.e. the risk that one researcher could incorrectly see horsepox synthesis as good and take action based on that conclusion which is made independently from the scientific community.
Charities & Organisations
There are a number of organisations and groups which research and advocate for improved research efforts, policy coordination and international cooperation on managing biosecurity risks.
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Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations — partnership between public, private, philanthropic, and civil society organisations who mission is to accelerate the development of accessible vaccines and other biologic countermeasures against epidemic and pandemic threats.
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Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) — research centre based at the University of Cambridge which has global catastrophic biological risks as one of its key focus areas.
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Biosecurity Research Initiative — hub based at St Catharine's College, Cambridge to provide evidence-based information about existing and emerging biological security risks and interventions.
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Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics — research centre based at Harvard University which is focused on improving methods for mathematical modeling and statistical inference on infectious disease data, engagement with policy makers to improve decisions, and outreach to multiple constituencies.
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Future of Humanity Institute — multidisciplinary research institute at the University of Oxford, with one of its focus areas being in biosecurity.
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Francis Crick Institute — London-based biomedical discovery institute researching the biology underlying human health.
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Nuffield Council on Bioethics — independent body that examines and reports on ethical issues in biology and medicine.
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Global Health Programme at Chatham House — independent policy institute and think tank seeking to address how global health challenges manifest themselves as international affairs problems. with a focus on the political economy of health, health sector reforms and improving governance in global health.
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Open Philanthropy — grantmaking foundation's webpage on its support for research and organisations whose activities could reduce the threat of a major global disruption from a GCBR.
Careers & Opportunities
Think that biosecurity is important and something you would be interested in working on? Here you can find out more about how you can pursue a career in the field, or test your potential to have an impact in it.
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80,000 Hours — good starting point to get thinking about a career making an impact on reducing GCBRs.
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'Biosecurity needs engineers and materials scientists' — forum post published in 2021 argues that "[e]xpertise in engineering physical systems is critically needed for some of the most important and neglected biosecurity interventions, including improved PPE and designing pandemic-safe buildings."
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'Information security careers for GCR reduction' — post summarising that a job in preventing unauthorised users from accessing or altering information may be an impactful career path; includes a link to dedicated Facebook group.
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'Biosecurity newsletters you should subscribe to' — opportunities to hear about the latest updates and developments in the field.