Technology Review (April-May 2006) published my comments to the lead article for March issue:
“The Knowledge” http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16485
by Mr. Mark Williams. It appears that Mr. Williams is a staff reporter of the journal
who took interview from Mr. Sergei Popov from George Mason University
National Center for Biodefense and Infectious Diseases http://ncbid.gmu.edu/
headed by Mr. Ken Alibek.
The original article may be found here http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16485
My comments posted by the journal:
Williams writes that even if we enacted George Church’s proposal to register all DNA synthesizers and force certain classes of researchers to work transparently, “not all nations would comply. For instance, Russian biologists, some of whom are known to have worked at Biopreparat, have reportedly trained molecular-biology students at the Pasteur Institute in Tehran.” It is important to note that educating students in molecular biology is by no means a violation of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) by itself. Moreover, even though the Soviet Union violated the BWC by developing bioweapons on its own territory, there has never been any known transfer of pathogens or weapons technology to third parties. Thus we have no reason to claim that Russia is a suspect country. Today, Russia is an active member of the BWC, and it renounced any bioweapons development activities in 1992. The problem of noncompliance is a very important one and is a major obstacle in the way of international implementation of the control mechanisms, but most experts would agree that this threat is not coming from Russia.
Aleksandr Rabodzey
Cambridge, MA
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16780&ch=infotech
Editor of the journal considered the second part of my letter “not interesting” and it was omitted
from the journal. I still believe it may be a valid comment and publish it here:
Hello dear editor of the Technology Review, I am writing to you regarding the article “The Knowledge” by Mr. Mark Williams published in the last March’s issue. I want to emphasize the importance of bringing into the discussion the topic of biological weapons threat assessment, it is important that MIT community is getting involved into this talk more and more. The issues of control over biotechnology were brought up in the recent Student Pugwash discussions and by members of MIT Security Studies Program and Science, Technology, and Global Security Working Group at MIT.
The article presents very balanced opinion on the problem of biological weapons development. One may notice that as we look at the works in the area of BW threat assessment, reasonable scientific approach overcomes initial hysteria and fear of BW. It is very important that we, as members of MIT scientific community keep to these highest standards and present accurate and scientifically supported conclusions. It is also important that we cover the whole variety of options and solutions proposed to resolve the problem of controls over biotechnology.
That is why I think it is important to add few comments to Mr. Williams’s article. Thus, in the last chapter of his discussion “Is help on the way?” Mr. Williams claims that “…no one has a good idea about what should be done”. Mr. Williams quotes one of the possible solutions proposed by Prof. Church of Harvard, while misses to present other policy propositions such as those by Stanford’s CISAC Christopher Chyba and Alex Greninger in their paper “Biotechnology and Bioterrorism: An Unprecedented World” Survival (2004), by Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM), University of Maryland, John Steinbruner and Stacy Okutani “The Protective Oversight of Biotechnology”, Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, Dec 2004, Vol. 2, No. 4: 273-280, by Sandia Laboratory’s Reynolds Salerno and Jennifer Gaudioso “Science and government. Biosecurity and research: minimizing adverse impacts”, Science. 2004 Apr 30; 304(5671): 687, “Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism” by National Research Council, 2004, “Biosecurity implications of the synthesis of pathogenic viruses” Politics and the Life Sciences, September 2003 vol. 22, no. 2 and more.
Thus one cannot say that no one has a good idea about what should be done, instead, there is a discussion about the traded-offs of biotechnology controls. The discussion is very vivid and a number of propositions have already been implemented. Moreover, some steps have already been made by biotech industry itself, like it was proposed in papers cited above: Blue Heron Technologies – one of the biotech companies providing custom sequences synthesis currently compares all of the ordered sequences against pathogen genomes database. There is a long way ahead of us and we have to work further on implementation of the controls.
