Multiple Science Academies

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As an umbrella international association linking multiple science academies, the lAP has also been influential in encouraging its members to address dual use issues through the efforts of its Biosecurity Working Group. Participants singled out the 2005 IAP Statement on Biosecurity as another useful resource to build local scientific engagement and commitment. In addition to IAP, other umbrella scientific organizations may be valuable partners in efforts to increase the extent to which social responsibility and ethics training are incorporated into the life sciences. The International Council for Science (ICSU), which includes both national academies of science and scientific unions as its members, also has a Committee on the Freedom and Responsibility of Science.

Workshop participants discussed other contributions that they believed scientific organizations could make to education and the ways to promote and sustain such engagement. Participants suggested making use of existing fora, such as scientific conferences, science education conferences, and other meetings to discuss dual use issues and foster engagement. Activities ...
... will need to be tailored to local and regional needs, and different approaches may be appropriate to engaging scientists in different countries. Participants thus envisioned a collection of activities at several scales, in which local and/or discipline-specific organizations might generate material relevant for their particular audiences, regional networking could be used to promote education about aspects of safety and security, particularly as linked to the development of standards and best practices, international activities and partners could lend support to local and regional activities, and workshops could be encouraged to share and disseminate materials and to build networks and capacity.

The potential of codes of conduct as education tools has already been mentioned, but it should be noted here that a number of professional societies and unions have codes of conduct that include biosecurity and dual use issues. ASM, for example, has long devoted attention to the ethical issues around biological weapons and more recently bioterrorism. Interestingly, it was participation in the 2005 BWC meetings related to codes of conduct that provided the impetus for IUMS and IUBMB to develop codes of ethics for their organizations and members.

National academies of science can also draw on their convening power to organize meetings and may inform the policies of governments by providing advice through studies and reports or other advisory capacities. Warsaw participants highlighted the role of science academies as sources of advice for their governments and noted the value of scientific assessments conducted by academies in giving credibility to the importance of dual use issues in biology. This includes studies, such as the Fink and Lemon-Relman reports, and reports from the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. A number of academies have also conducted workshops or other convening activities, such as two regional meetings carried out by the Ugandan National Academy of Sciences and a workshop by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the OECD in 2008. In 2006, The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) undertook to develop a code of conduct on biosecurity at the request of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. KNAW convened a Biosecurity Workgroup as well as a focus group of researchers and policymakers to provide input into the process. The code articulates guiding principles to inform responsible conduct. Of particular relevance to the question of education is the section on "Raising Awareness," which recommends in part to "devote specific attention in the education and further training of professionals in the life sciences to the risks of misuse of biological, biomedical, biotechnological and other life sciences research and the constraints imposed by the btwc [sic] and other regulations in that context". Following the release of the code in October 2007, the KNAW organized presentations and debates, and it continues to follow up on the dissemination activities.