At the recent BioDesign Forum held in Cambridge, U.K., Dr. Piers Millet Deputy Head of the Implementation Support Unit for the Biological Weapons Convention, United Nations’ Office for Disarmament Affairs in Geneva, Switzerland, talked on the issue of the dangers of there not being a global organization whose mission was to ensure that biotech was not used for “nefarious” purposes. The BBC reported that Dr. Millet pointed out that international bodies did exist to watch out for nuclear and chemical weapons. “The traditional approach of the international community to dealing with weapons in this – they recognize a threat, develop a treaty, and then they turn that treaty into some operational form, normally by trying to control technology associated with it,” he said. “It has very strong models in nuclear and chemical spheres – but not in regards to synthetic biology.”

Dr. Millet noted that with regards nuclear issues the world had the International Atomic Energy Agency and from a chemical weapons perspective, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. But there is no international organization within the biological arena. Dr. Millet summarized the main points of the existing biological weapons convention noting that, “this balances security with the legal right to access for peaceful use.” Dr. Millet continued, “There is quite a big push to enforce this at the international level, to set up some technology-based control regimes in the biological arena. I personally believe this is doable.”

The BBC also reported that, “Professor Tom Knight, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is referred to by many in the scientific community as “the father of synthetic biology,” said that there was “a race going on between people who try to do bad things, and the ability to use technology to counter these threats. With the advancement of synthetic biology, it becomes possible to do dangerous things – but it also becomes possible to respond to those more rapidly, more effectively, with advanced technology.”