Abstract
The Department of Homeland Security recently broke ground for a highly secret, 160,000-squarefoot center at Fort Detrick, Maryland, to research worst-case biological threats by creating them in the lab. This “threat characterization” program, part of the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center, will engineer new viral and bacterial strains that terrorists might theoretically develop and will also reportedly test them in weapons systems.
Even with state-of-the-art technology for preventing the escape of dangerous pathogens, the risk is not negligible. The more these kinds of research facilities expand, the greater the chance for human error, technical failure, or intentional theft. Excessive secrecy greatly exacerbates this danger. The Bush administration plans to classify the entire Homeland Security laboratory building as a “Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility,” with severe limitations on access and release of information. The Defense Department also conducts highly classified threat characterization programs. At one time, Defense considered it unnecessary to classify these projects, with the exception of research results that impinged on national security. That policy has been changed.
Under the present level of secrecy, significant monitoring of experimental work with biological threats will be impossible. Will these activities take unnecessary risks? Will government labs concentrate on plausible biothreats or digress into hypothetical scenarios?
Moreover, can the public be sure that these laboratories enforce rigorous safety and security rules? Or will carelessness crop up, as it so often does in labs routinely handling dangerous materials? Indeed, workers at Fort Detrick inadvertently spread anthrax outside of high-containment units, despite tightened security measures in the aftermath of the 2001 anthrax mailings.
Observers abroad will wonder whether secret threat characterization and assessment activities comply with the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC). The parties to the BWC, including the United States, have recognized that testing biological weapons in operational scenarios for any purpose is prohibited. But the Bush administration argues this ban doesn't apply to U.S. programs because they have no offensive intentions–leaving the United States with no basis for objecting if other countries choose to pursue offensive programs under the pretext of biodefense. The Bush position, together with excessive secrecy, is undermining the BWC and encouraging the expansion of bioweapon research worldwide–a development that plays into the hands of terrorists, who would undoubtedly prefer to infiltrate national programs rather than develop the weapons themselves.
The best antidote to these concerns is external oversight, with several layers of safeguards. For starters, all planned biological threat characterization activities should get advance approval from the National Security Council, in consultation with the State Department; presidential approval should be required for research of special concern. Congress also needs to be brought on board, with line-item budgeting for lab activities, annual testimony by researchers, and detailed annual reports. And, in addition to routine government oversight, the National Academy of Sciences should convene a panel of outside scientists–not limited to those who already hold security clearance–to periodically review all plans and activities.
On the international stage, the United Nations should work with scientific organizations to develop standards for reviewing, monitoring, and approving biological research projects worldwide–particularly in the area of genetic engineering–that could be applied by states or terrorists to offensive use. This proposal was a key recommendation of the 2005 consensus report published by the bipartisan U.S. Task Force on the United Nations, chaired by former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Democratic Sen. George Mitchell. Ultimately, an international panel of highly respected experts should be established to monitor all biological research with a potential for misuse.
Although the 2001 anthrax mailings sparked widespread panic, the casualties were mercifully few, and the prospect of terrorists developing biological weapons of mass destruction is still a threat of the future. We should not hasten this scenario by creating its tools in our own labs.
Supplementary Material
American Interests and U.N. Reform: Report of the Task Force on the United Nations