Life Sciences and Related Fields: Trends Relevant to the Biological Weapons Convention

摘要

As part of the preparations for the Seventh Review Conference of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC), a group of national and international scientific organizations held a workshop in Beijing, China, in November 2010 to provide independent input from the scientific community about trends in science and technology (S&T) relevant to the convention. The workshop provided an opportunity to discuss the implications of recent developments in S&T in diverse fields such as immunology, neuroscience, synthetic biology, and drug and gene delivery mechanisms that are potentially relevant to new or more deadly biological weapons or bioterrorism, as well as for detection, diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines that affect potential prevention and response to biological attacks. The workshop drew on the scientific community's expertise in identifying the state of research in the life sciences. It did not address the question of policy options to respond to the implications of the identified trends, because the choice of such responses rests with the 164 States Parties to the Convention, who must consider multiple factors beyond the state of the science.