Harmful misuse of research

In light of global events, there have been heightened concerns regarding the risks that biomedical research could be misused for terrorist or other harmful purposes.

These issues are receiving increasing political attention both in the UK and internationally:

• Two pieces of UK legislation (the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 and the Export Control Act 2002) have given the Government enhanced powers to impose security measures on the use and transfer of materials and technology of relevance to research in the life sciences.
• Concerns over research misuse have been discussed in recent reports by the House of Commons Select Committees on Science and Technology and Foreign Affairs.
• The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office will chair the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, which will focus on the possible role of codes of conduct for scientists in strengthening the Convention.
• The US National Academies published a report in Autumn 2003 entitled Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism, which made a series of recommendations for how the scientific community could act to reduce the risks of research misuse.

In November 2003, the Trust published a position statement on bioterrorism and biomedical research, setting out our current thinking on these issues.

Following the publication of this statement, the Trust has engaged actively in policy discussions on these concerns and worked in partnership with other stakeholders.

The Trust participated in a session of the 2004 BA Festival of Science on codes of conduct for biological weapons, giving a presentation about safeguarding against the harmful misuse of research [PowerPoint 1.42MB].

In October 2004, the Trust and the Royal Society held a joint workshop entitled 'Do no harm – reducing the potential for the misuse of life science research', at which practising life scientists from academia and industry, and representatives of Government agencies, funding bodies and other relevant organisations, met to discuss these concerns. A summary report [PDF 200KB] of this workshop is available for download.

The Trust, in common with other funding agencies, already has rigorous processes in place to ensure that the research it funds is of highest scientific quality and that any ethical issues associated with applications are addressed. We have worked in partnership with the Medical Research Council and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council to examine ways in which we could strengthen these processes in light of concerns over research misuse.In September 2005, the three organisations published a joint policy statement on managing risks of misuse associated with grant funding activities.