CHICAGO, Ill. -- The biosciences are converging with information technology, nanotechnology, and materials science in unforeseen ways, yielding remarkable advances that have the potential to cure--or kill. To reduce the likelihood that these discoveries will be exploited for destructive ends, the authors of the 2006 report, "Globalization, Biosecurity, and the Future of Life Sciences," propose a "web of protection" that bolsters the development of robust defenses without restricting the free flow of scientific information.
Writing in the September/October Bulletin, the authors argue that fixing a fractured public health system to be responsive to "both natural and deliberate biological threats" is perhaps "the most obvious and important" of the recommendations coming from the report produced by a committee of the National Research Council/Institute of Medicine (IOM).
Eileen R. Choffnes, director of the IOM's Forum on Microbial Threats; Stanley M. Lemon, forum chair and director of the Institute of Human Infections and Immunity at the University of Texas, Galveston; and David A. Relman, associate professor of microbiology and immunology and of medicine at Stanford University, were the study director and co-chairs, respectively, of the committee.