BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH AT THE AGE OF BIOTERROR

Emerging biotechnologies have an enormous potential to improve society’s well-being but also raise concern regarding bioterror, biosecurity and biosafety dangers. Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC) is life sciences research that is basically intended to benefit society, but might easily be misapplied to cause harm intentionally. Advanced life science research can be anticipated to provide knowledge or technologies that could be directly misapplied to pose a significant threat with broad potential consequences to public health or national security. The immediate national challenge is to raise security level without compromising scientific research. The Israeli Knesset enacted the Law “The Regulation of Research into Biological Disease Agents, ACT 2008“, which defines national guidelines for research with infectious biological agents. The Council for Regulating and Monitoring Infectious Disease Agents Research received the mandate to implement this Law in research institutions.