“…Unlike the technologies of conventional or even nuclear weapons, biotechnology has the potential to place mass destructive capabilities in a multitude of hands and, in coming decades, to reach deeply into what we are and how we regard ourselves. “…During the century ahead, as our ability to modify fundamental life processes continues its rapid advance, we will be able not only to devise additional ways to destroy life but will also become able to manipulate it – including the processes of cognition, development, reproduction and inheritance….Therein could lie unprecedented opportunities for violence, coercion, repression, or subjugation…”Īnd he pointed out that dangerous capabilities could be available to a much wider range of actors than were available in relation to nuclear weapons: He also thought that this would be a long drawn out struggle, stating that: 5 The problem that concerns States Parties to the BTWC was set out at the turn of the century in 2000 by Matthew Meselson, Professor of Molecular Biology at Harvard University when he questioned whether, as all previous scientific and technological revolutions had been applied in major ways to hostile purposes, it was probable that the same would happen to the revolution in civil biotechnology unless we found ways to prevent that happening. This would make a major contribution to the prevention of further such outbreaks by engaging life scientists effectively for the first time in support of the prohibition of biological weapons that are embodied in the BTWC. As part of that rethink, it should be possible now, 45 years after the Convention entered into force 4, to bring the protracted discussions on a Code of Conduct under the Convention to a successful conclusion at the 2021 9th Five-Year Review Conference of the BTWC. 2 The devastating COVID-19 disease outbreak in early 2020 is likely to cause a major rethink about the dangers of natural, accidental and deliberate disease outbreaks in humans, animals and plants when the outbreak is eventually brought under control 3. Given the application of developments in science in the major offensive military biological warfare programmes of the Twentieth Century, where viruses, toxins, bacteria and fungi had been weaponised 1, one major concern for the States has been the impact of rapid advances in the life sciences on the potential ease with which novel and very dangerous biological and toxin weapons could be developed by States, Non-State Actors, or even individuals. Largely out of sight of most people, States Parties to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) have been meeting at the United Nations in Geneva over the last two decades trying to find ways to strengthen the Convention following the failure to agree on a Protocol during the 1990s.
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