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By Lauren | April 4, 2012

Human beings are wonderfully inventive, and can come up with all kinds of wonderful things ? and all kinds of ways to use them that might or might not be so wonderful. Take bird flu, for instance. NPR recently reported on a controversy that?s brewing in the scientific community. Seems that, in order to better understand how bird flu might become capable of spreading among people in a massive pandemic, biologists altered the virus. Now, there?s a dispute pending between those biologists, who want to publish their findings, and homeland security gurus who want to prevent the modified virus from being used as a biological weapon.

Interesting times we live in, don?t you think?

Part of the problem is that there?s no national protocol for how potentially dangerous scientific discoveries get vetted for ?dual use,? i.e., the risk that legitimate discoveries might be used to cause harm. It?s not a new concept; after all, everything from frying pans to flamethrowers can be utilized as weapons, and it?s all too easy to pervert harmless items for harmful use. (Honestly, before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, who would ever have thought to use airliners and their fuel as long-range missles?) Trouble is, the government reportedly has no formal mechanism in place at the moment to identify which proposed experiments might produce dangerous information. That means that researchers and universities who aren?t sensitive to dual use issues can innocently allow their curiosity to bear potentially lethal fruit, leaving the government to step in and limit publication and distribution only after the danger is already in existence.

We could, as a nation, curtail scientific research until the government catches up and develops a comprehensive system for analyzing the potential for dual use in scientific experiments. Personally, though, I don?t think we should wait that long. No one knows better how dangerous an experiment can be than the scientists performing it. Instead of delaying research to accommodate a government agency that might never get its act together, I think scientists and reasearch facilities should develop their own professional standards for identifying and managing the risk of dual use. They can bring in outside advisors who are expert in national security to help them, and probably get the job done a lot faster and more effectively than the government can. We need scientific research to continue to grow and prosper as a nation, but we also need to make sure that the fruits of that research do less harm and more good.

Topics: Business Ethics, Lauren Recommends, Professional Ethics, Risk Management, Social Ethics, corporate responsibility, ethics |

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