Weapons and Hope

In the commotion of European missile defense, UN nuclear speeches, Security Council nuclear resolutions, and Iranian and Korean developments, it becomes very easy to miss the developments in another world, one that may very well be just as critical and threatening as strategic nuclear concerns: that of the biological.  Encouraging things are astir in the biological world.  Meaningful studies, reports, and plans are finally coming to fruition in the U.S. in response to the recommendations set forth by Bob Graham’s and Jim Talent’s 2008 Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism.  These domestic measures are incredibly important not only to secure the American homeland but also to reinforce the Biological Weapons Convention and contribute to the global nonproliferation regime.  Such action is of great exigency: the Graham/Talent Commission concluded that a biological attack is the most likely form of WMD attack in the near future.  “Rightly” so, concluded Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) in regards to this prediction.

Legislation to Protect the Homeland

Sen. Lieberman made this comment on September 8^th, during his introduction of S. 1649, the WMD Prevention and Preparedness Act of 2009, which he co-sponsored with Senator Susan Collins (R-ME).  The legislation will implement a wide variety of recommendations from the Graham/Talent Commission to reduce the American homeland’s vulnerability to bioterrorism.  It aims to strengthen and universalize biological and biotechnological research security standards by introducing an integrated set of pathogen risk tiers, implementing risk assessment protocols, overhauling personnel reliability assessments, as well as other measures.  The legislation also lays out new blueprints for preparedness plans, such as networks for communications and access to countermeasures.

Since the FBI’s conclusion in August 2008 that the sole perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax letters was an American microbiologist working in a government facility, the threat of rogue scientists has been a particularly high-profile concern.  On September 22^nd, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a follow-up hearing on the Lieberman-Collins bill. As one of the hearing’s witnesses, Bob Graham indicated that a rogue scientist is the most likely scenario in which a biological weapon attack is carried out.  Later that day, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security held a similar hearing, entitled “Strengthening Security and Oversight at Biological Research Laboratories.”  The scheduling of two similar hearings so close to one another may be an important indication of the awareness on the Hill of serious bioterrorist threats.

A recently released National Research Council report assessed this issued, concluding that “there is no ‘silver bullet,’ that is, no single assessment tool that can offer the prospect of effectively screening out every potential terrorist” (9).  Nonetheless, a wide variety of protective measures will drastically reduce that risk.  The NRC report gives nine biosecurity recommendations (see the Executive Summary), which have been largely addressed by the Lieberman-Collins bill.  On top of the NRC report, the GAO has issued two relevant reports recently.  A July report identified gaps in security at high-containment laboratories, while a September report calls for a national strategy for oversight on high-containment laboratories, which would establish “uniform rules governing the planning, construction, accreditation and operation of the nation’s most sensitive biological defense laboratories” (GSN).  According to Global Security Newswire, federal officials and independent experts have been having difficulty determining which agency should take the lead on that agenda.  It is unfortunate that parochial politics and bureaucratic stalling are getting in the way.  Nonetheless, it is reassuring that people are talking about these critical issues.

The U.S. biological research complex has been plagued in the past by problems of security, standardization, and accounting (see here).  The volume of visible activity contributed over the last few months to the U.S. biosecurity establishment is encouraging; it seems that the country is now moving in the right direction to eliminate these vulnerabilities.

Legislation to Protect the World

Domestic legislation and activities aimed at protecting against bioterrorism not only serve to protect individual countries but also support the international movement to fortify the world against nefarious biological threats and proliferation.  An international multilateral treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), sits at the center of this movement.  However, the BWC lacks an international implementation body and contains no provisions for monitoring or verifying compliance with the treaty.

As stipulated by Article IV of the treaty, the onus is placed on the honest participation and initiative of individual member nations:

Article IV

Each State Party to this Convention shall, in accordance with its constitutional processes, take any necessary measures to prohibit and prevent the development, production, stockpiling, acquisition, or retention of the agents, toxins, weapons, equipment and means of delivery specified in article I of the Convention, within the territory of such State, under its jurisdiction or under its control anywhere.

In their September 22^nd joint statement to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Graham and Talent expressed their faith in the BWC:

While the treaty has some inevitable limitations—particularly the difficulty in detecting violators—it remains a powerful norm: no nation brags about their biological weapons capability. It is our obligation to strengthen this norm, internationally. Right now, the clock is ticking on the BWC—the next BWC review conference, in which every article of the entire treaty is reviewed, takes place in 2011. We must propose a new action plan for achieving universal adherence to the BWC, so that all nations of the world are signatories to this pact. We also need to promote new ideas for how the BWC may be implemented on a national level. This conference presents the United States with an opportunity to showcase the progress we have made here at home in both lab safety and lab security. We will have the opportunity to set the global standards of success.

Just as strategic nuclear reductions and declaratory policies made by individual nations help to solidify the nuclear nonproliferation norm, actions taken by individual nations to ensure the safety, security, and legality of domestic biological research help to solidify the biological nonproliferation norm.  Bills like the recent Lieberman-Collins proposal are vital to transforming the BWC into a robust and healthy international regime.  Sen. Lieberman shared Graham’s and Talent’s broad vision, saying, “We hope that this proposal embracing the recommendations of the Graham-Talent commission will set an international standard for biosecurity.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. is not the only entity contributing to international action.  For example, the Australian Parliament adopted legislation for stricter biosecurity practices this past September.  And yesterday, the UN Headquarters in New York hosted a special event entitled “Resolution 1540: At the Crossroads” that brought together experts from academia, NGOs, and industry to review states’ responsibility under Resolution 1540.  Based on the resolution, “all States shall take and enforce effective measures to establish domestic controls to prevent the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons and their means of delivery, including by establishing appropriate controls over related materials.”  At least three papers were presented that focused exclusively on biological issues.  This included a paper by Dr. Marie Isabelle Chevrier of the BioWeapons Prevention Project, which endorsed greater government and UN engagement with civil society groups for help “in monitoring and raising awareness of the norms against the weaponization of disease.”

Concluding Thoughts

It is in the interest of every nation to pursue a strong set of biosecurity prevention and preparedness measures for two important reasons.  First, as explained above, domestic action on the part of individual nations goes a long way in contributing to the nonproliferation regime, thereby decreasing the risk of an attack occurring in one’s own homeland.  Second, given the modern mobility of people and infectious disease, a biological weapon attack occurring anywhere presents a subsequent threat to the rest of the world.  This renders national and international interests as one and the same—and this applies to both nefarious and natural biological threats.

As previously articulated, the volume of visible activity in the biosecurity movement over the past few months is encouraging.  It may not be at the head, but bio is certainly at the international table of nonproliferation discourse.  Biological threat issues still require a greater influx of creative minds and active awareness.  For this reason, Dr. Chevrier’s paper, and the BioWeapons Prevention Project as a whole, are particularly interesting.  Ultimately, these issues must come to the forefront of public awareness before breakthrough progress can be made.