Taking due care: moral obligations in dual use research

The ethics of engineered living materials

Engineered living materials (ELMs) combine living and non-living entities. Their associated ethical concerns must be addressed to promote safety, promote sustainability, and regulate societal impacts. This article identifies key ethical and safety issues by reflecting on fundamental ethical principles. It further discusses a future ethical roadmap for sustainable research in ELMs.

Bioethical Boundaries, Critiques of Current Paradigms, and the Importance of Transparency

This issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy is dedicated to topics in clinical ethics with essays addressing clinician participation in state sponsored execution, duties to decrease ecological footprints in medicine, the concept of caring and its relationship to conscientious refusal, the dilemmas involved in dual use research, a philosophical and practical critique of principlism, conundrums that arise when applying surrogate decision-making models to patients with moderate intellectual disabilities, the phenomenology of chronic disease, and ethical concerns surrounding the use of artificial intelligence in medicine. Throughout the issue, the themes of conceptual and moral boundaries in bioethics, critiques of current clinical ethics paradigms, and the importance of transparency are prominent.

Synthetic biology in various cellular and molecular fields: applications, limitations, and perspective

Synthetic biology breakthroughs have facilitated genetic circuit engineering to program cells through novel biological functions, dynamic gene expressions, as well as logic controls. SynBio can also participate in the rapid development of new treatments required for the human lifestyle. Moreover, these technologies are applied in the development of innovative therapeutic, diagnostic, as well as discovery-related methods within a wide range of cellular and molecular applications. In the present review study, SynBio applications in various cellular and molecular fields such as novel strategies for cancer therapy, biosensing, metabolic engineering, protein engineering, and tissue engineering were highlighted and summarized. The major safety and regulatory concerns about synthetic biology will be the environmental release, legal concerns, and risks of the engineered organisms. The final sections focused on limitations to SynBio.

Towards the Ethical Publication of Country of Origin Information (COI) in the Asylum Process

This article addresses the question of how ‘Country of Origin Information’ (COI) reports—that is, research developed and used to support decision-making in the asylum process—can be published in an ethical manner. The article focuses on the risk that published COI reports could be misused and thereby harm the subjects of the reports and/or those involved in their development. It supports a situational approach to assessing data ethics when publishing COI reports, whereby COI service providers must weigh up the benefits and harms of publication based, inter alia, on the foreseeability and probability of harm due to potential misuse of the research, the public good nature of the research, and the need to balance the rights and duties of the various actors in the asylum process, including asylum seekers themselves. Although this article focuses on the specific question of ‘how to publish COI reports in an ethical manner’, it also intends to promote further research on data ethics in the asylum process, particularly in relation to refugees, where more foundational issues should be considered.

Awareness and Attitudes of Research Students Toward Dual-use Research of Concern in Pakistan: A Cross-sectional Questionnaire

Dual-use research poses a significant challenge for scientists in the biomedical field and for global health security in general. As the scientific knowledge and materials required for the development of biological agents become progressively more accessible and inexpensive, there is an increased need to understand and improve the governance of scientific research. Prevention of the misuse of facilities, equipment, agents, and scientific knowledge requires high levels of awareness of the concept of dual-use research, starting with early-career scientists and graduate students. In this study, the attitudes and level of awareness of postgraduate students in Pakistan toward the issues surrounding dual-use research were assessed through a survey containing both quantitative and qualitative questions in 32 universities in 4 provinces, federal area, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir regions of Pakistan; 933 students responded. Most (58.2%) had never heard of dual-use research of concern (DURC), while 18.5% had heard the term but were unsure of its meaning. Irrespective of prior knowledge, a higher percentage of students (68.6%) felt an obligation to report research misuse. Considering the need for DURC training, 94.1% of the respondents agreed that the principal investigator should take the responsibility to train students on DURC at the start of a research project. When experimental results having dual-use potential, 69.1% indicated they would publish with limited protocol, with 43.5% indicating they would publish the limited protocol only if there was a way for scientists to access their data. The survey results revealed limited DURC awareness among researchers across Pakistan. However, the respondents, although not formally educated about DURC, were quite aware of its impact. The information gained in this survey will be valuable in addressing country-specific awareness and training needs.

Pricing Externalities to Balance Public Risks and Benefits of Research

How should scientific funders evaluate research with public health risks? Some risky work is valuable, but accepting too much risk may be ethically neglectful. Recent controversy over H5N1 influenza experiments has highlighted the difficulty of this problem. Advocates of the research claim the work is needed to understand pandemics, while opponents claim that accidents or misuse could release the very pandemic the work is meant to prevent. In an attempt to resolve the debate, the US government sponsored an independent evaluation that successfully produced a quantitative estimate of the risks involved, but only a qualitative estimate of the benefits. Given the difficulties of this “apples-to-oranges” risk-benefit analysis, what is the best way forward? Here we outline a general approach for balancing risks and benefits of research with public risks. Instead of directly comparing risks and benefits, our approach requires only an estimate of risk, which is then translated into a financial price. This estimate can be obtained either through a centrally commissioned risk assessment or by mandating liability insurance, which allows private markets to estimate the financial burden of risky research. The resulting price can then be included in the cost of the research, enabling funders to evaluate grants as usual—comparing the scientific merits of a project against its full cost to society. This approach has the advantage of aligning incentives by assigning costs to those responsible for risks. It also keeps scientific funding decisions in the hands of scientists, while involving the public on questions of values and risk experts on risk evaluation.

How should scientific funders evaluate research with public health risks? Some risky work is valuable, but accepting too much risk may be ethically neglectful. Recent controversy over H5N1 influenza experiments has highlighted the difficulty of this problem. The authors outline a general approach for balancing risks and benefits of research with public risks.

Biological Dual-Use Research and Synthetic Biology of Yeast

In recent years, the publication of the studies on the transmissibility in mammals of the H5N1 influenza virus and synthetic genomes has triggered heated and concerned debate within the community of scientists on biological dual-use research; these papers have raised the awareness that, in some cases, fundamental research could be directed to harmful experiments, with the purpose of developing a weapon that could be used by a bioterrorist. Here is presented an overview regarding the dual-use concept and its related international agreements which underlines the work of the Australia Group (AG) Export Control Regime. It is hoped that the principles and activities of the AG, that focuses on export control of chemical and biological dual-use materials, will spread and become well known to academic researchers in different countries, as they exchange biological materials (i.e. plasmids, strains, antibodies, nucleic acids) and scientific papers. To this extent, and with the aim of drawing the attention of the scientific community that works with yeast to the so called Dual-Use Research of Concern, this article reports case studies on biological dual-use research and discusses a synthetic biology applied to the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, namely the construction of the first eukaryotic synthetic chromosome of yeast and the use of yeast cells as a factory to produce opiates. Since this organism is considered harmless and is not included in any list of biological agents, yeast researchers should take simple actions in the future to avoid the sharing of strains and advanced technology with suspicious individuals.

The ethics of sexual reorientation: what should clinicians and researchers do?

Technological measures meant to change sexual orientation are, we have argued elsewhere, deeply alarming, even and indeed especially if they are safe and effective. Here we point out that this in part because they produce a distinctive kind of 'clinical collective action problem', a sort of dilemma for individual clinicians and researchers: a treatment which evidently relieves the suffering of particular patients, but in the process contributes to a practice that substantially worsens the conditions that produce this suffering in the first place. We argue that the role obligations of clinicians to relieve the suffering of their patients put them in a poor position to solve this problem, though they can take measures to avoid complicity in the harms that would result from widespread use of individually safe and effective reorientation biotechnology. But in the end the medical community as a whole still seems obligated to provide these measures, if they become technologically feasible. Medical researchers are in a better position to prevent the harms that would result if reorientation techniques were safe, effective and widely available. We argue that the harms attendant on the development of safe and effective re-orientation techniques give researchers reason to avoid 'applied' research aimed at developing these techniques, and to be careful in the conduct of basic orientation research which might be applied in this way.

Between Scylla and Charybdis: reconciling competing data management demands in the life sciences

BACKGROUND

The widespread sharing of biologicaConcluding Comments: Teaching Responsible Datal and biomedical data is recognised as a key element in facilitating translation of scientific discoveries into novel clinical applications and services. At the same time, twenty-first century states are increasingly concerned that this data could also be used for purposes of bioterrorism. There is thus a tension between the desire to promote the sharing of data, as encapsulated by the Open Data movement, and the desire to prevent this data from 'falling into the wrong hands' as represented by 'dual use' policies. Both frameworks posit a moral duty for life sciences researchers with respect to how they should make their data available. However, Open data and dual use concerns are rarely discussed in concert and their implementation can present scientists with potentially conflicting ethical requirements.

DISCUSSION

Both dual use and Open data policies frame scientific data and data dissemination in particular, though different, ways. As such they contain implicit models for how data is translated. Both approaches are limited by a focus on abstract conceptions of data and data sharing. This works to impede consensus-building between the two ethical frameworks. As an alternative, this paper proposes that an ethics of responsible management of scientific data should be based on a more nuanced understanding of the everyday data practices of life scientists. Responsibility for these 'micromovements' of data must consider the needs and duties of scientists as individuals and as collectively-organised groups. Researchers in the life sciences are faced with conflicting ethical responsibilities to share data as widely as possible, but prevent it being used for bioterrorist purposes. In order to reconcile the responsibilities posed by the Open Data and dual use frameworks, approaches should focus more on the everyday practices of laboratory scientists and less on abstract conceptions of data.

Dual-use decision making: relational and positional issues

Debates about dual-use research often turn on the potential for scientific research to be used to benefit or harm humanity. This dual-use potential is conventionally understood as the product of the magnitude of the harms and benefits of dual-use research, multiplied by their likelihood. This account, however, neglects important social aspects of the use of science and technology. In this paper, I supplement existing conceptions of dual-use potential to account for the social context of dual-use research. This account incorporates relational and positional concerns that feature in the success or failure of dual-use. I then defend this account against foreseeable objections.

Dual use research: investigation across multiple science disciplines

Most recent studies of dual use research have focused on the life sciences, although some researchers have suggested that dual use research occurs across many disciplines. This research is an initial investigation into the prevalence of dual use research in other scientific disciplines by surveying senior editors of scientific journals, drawn from Journal Citation Reports. The survey was emailed to 7,500 journal editors with a response rate of 10.1 %. Approximately 4.8 % of life science editors reported they had to consider whether to publish dual use research and 38.9 % said they decided to not publish the research in question. In disciplines other than the life sciences, 7.2 % of editors from other science disciplines reported that they had to consider whether to publish dual use research, and 48.4 % declined to publish it. The survey investigated relationships between dual use and the journal's source of funding and place of publication, but no relationships were found. Further research is needed to better understand the occurrence of dual use research in other science disciplines.

Ethics in the minutiae: examining the role of the physical laboratory environment in ethical discourse

Responsibility within life science research is a highly scrutinised field. Increasingly, scientists are presented with a range of duties and expectations regarding their conduct within the research setting. In many cases, these duties are presented deontologically, forgoing extensive discussion on how these are practically implemented into the minutiae of daily research practices. This de-contextualized duty has proven problematic when it comes to practical issues of compliance, however it is not often considered as a fundamental aspect of building ethics discourse. This paper examines this issue in detail, particularly focusing on how differences in the contrasts between the ideal and real physical research environments cause conceptual problems for scientists and retard ethical engagement. Such issues are particularly pertinent in low- and middle-income countries. This paper combines theoretical and empirical analyses using the concept of "dual-use" as a focalizing topic. The data show that the research environment acts as an intimate component in the interpretation and implementation of ethical actions.

From cases to capacity? A critical reflection on the role of 'ethical dilemmas' in the development of dual-use governance

The dual-use issue is often framed as a series of paralyzing 'dilemmas' facing the scientific community as well as institutions which support innovation. While this conceptualization of the dual-use issue can be useful in certain contexts (such as in awareness-raising and as part of educational activities directed at the scientific community) its usefulness is more limited when reflecting on the governance and politics of the dual-use issue. Within this paper, key shortcomings of the dilemma framing are outlined. It is argued that many of the issues raised in the most recent debates about 'dual-use' bird flu research remain unresolved. This includes questions about the trajectories of certain lines of research, as well as broader trends in the practice and governance of science. This leads to difficult questions about current approaches to the dual-use issue within the US, as well as internationally.

Moving life science ethics debates beyond national borders: some empirical observations

The life sciences are increasingly being called on to produce "socially robust" knowledge that honors the social contract between science and society. This has resulted in the emergence of a number of "broad social issues" that reflect the ethical tensions in these social contracts. These issues are framed in a variety of ways around the world, evidenced by differences in regulations addressing them. It is important to question whether these variations are simply regulatory variations or in fact reflect a contextual approach to ethics that brings into question the existence of a system of "global scientific ethics". Nonetheless, within ethics education for scientists these broad social issues are often presented using this scheme of global ethics due to legacies of science ethics pedagogy. This paper suggests this may present barriers to fostering international discourse between communities of scientists, and may cause difficulties in harmonizing (and transporting) national regulations for the governance of these issues. Reinterpreting these variations according to how the content of ethical principles is attributed by communities is proposed as crucial for developing a robust international discourse. To illustrate this, the paper offers some empirical fieldwork data that considers how the concept of dual-use (as a broad social issue) was discussed within African and UK laboratories. Demonstrating that African scientists reshaped the concept of dual-use according to their own research environmental pressures and ascribed alternative content to the principles that underpin it, suggests that the limitations of a "global scientific ethics" system for these issues cannot be ignored.

Beyond patchwork precaution in the dual-use governance of synthetic biology

The emergence of synthetic biology holds the potential of a major breakthrough in the life sciences by transforming biology into a predictive science. The dual-use characteristics of similar breakthroughs during the twentieth century have led to the application of benignly intended research in e.g. virology, bacteriology and aerobiology in offensive biological weapons programmes. Against this background the article raises the question whether the precautionary governance of synthetic biology can aid in preventing this techno-science witnessing the same fate? In order to address this question, this paper proceeds in four steps: it firstly introduces the emerging techno-science of synthetic biology and presents some of its potential beneficial applications. It secondly analyses contributions to the bioethical discourse on synthetic biology as well as precautionary reasoning and its application to life science research in general and synthetic biology more specifically. The paper then identifies manifestations of a moderate precautionary principle in the emerging synthetic biology dual-use governance discourse. Using a dual-use governance matrix as heuristic device to analyse some of the proposed measures, it concludes that the identified measures can best be described as "patchwork precaution" and that a more systematic approach to construct a web of dual-use precaution for synthetic biology is needed in order to guard more effectively against the field's future misuse for harmful applications.

The ethics of disseminating dual-use knowledge

In 2011, for the first time ever, two scientific journals were asked not to publish research papers in full detail. The research in question was on the H5N1 influenza virus (bird flu), and the concern was that the expected public health benefits of disseminating the findings did not outweigh the potential harm should the knowledge be misused for malicious purposes. This constraint raises important ethical concerns as it collides with scientific freedom and openness. In this article, we argue that constraining the dissemination of dual-use knowledge can in certain cases be justified because, for example: scientists have a responsibility for potentially harmful consequences of their research; the public need not always know of all scientific discoveries; uncertainty about the risks of harm may warrant precaution; and expected benefits do not always outweigh potential harm. However, the constraints in question are not absolute but can be both temporary and partial. We propose three core aspects for an ethics of dual-use dissemination: dual-use awareness, precaution, and acknowledgment of conflicting values. Additionally, to help scientists understand when constraints on dissemination may be justified we suggest three corresponding conditions that prompt scientists to recognize dual-use material or research, consider the potential impact of dual-use knowledge dissemination, and acknowledge and respond to external dissemination concerns.

Data sharing and dual-use issues

The concept of dual-use encapsulates the potential for well-intentioned, beneficial scientific research to also be misused by a third party for malicious ends. The concept of dual-use challenges scientists to look beyond the immediate outcomes of their research and to develop an awareness of possible future (mis)uses of scientific research. Since 2001 much attention has been paid to the possible need to regulate the dual-use potential of the life sciences. Regulation initiatives fall under two broad categories-those that develop the ethical education of scientists and foster an awareness and responsibility of dual-use issues, and those which assess the regulation of information being generated by current research. Both types of initiatives are premised on a cautious, risk-adverse philosophy which advocates careful examination of all future endpoints of research endeavors. This caution advocated within initiatives such as pre-publication review of journal articles contrasts to the obligation to share underpinning data sharing discussions. As the dual-use debate has yet to make a significant impact on data sharing discussions (and vice versa) it is possible that these two areas of knowledge control may present areas of ethical conflict for scientists, and thus need to be more closely examined. This paper examines the tension between the obligation to share exemplified by data sharing principles and the concerns raised by the risk-cautious culture of the dual-use debates. The paper concludes by reflecting on the issues of responsibility as raised by dual-use as relating to data sharing, such as the chain of custody for shared data.

Research infrastructures, policies and the 'web of prevention': the ethical implications of inadequate research environments

The dual-use potential of scientific research refers to the possibility that any beneficial scientific research may be misused for nefarious purposes by a third party. This potential within the life sciences has led to much discussion regarding ways to raise awareness and limit possible harm. The concept of a 'web of prevention' as a multifaceted system for addressing this potential for harm provides a comprehensive method of conceptualizing a system of controls in the life sciences. The web of prevention involves multiple stakeholders, from diverse backgrounds such as science, public health, security studies and governance. Research within the life sciences relies on a number of different structures, such as waste disposal and border controls, which provide a comprehensive environment for scientists to work in. The web of prevention relies on the assumption of these systems working to support any further initiatives that are proposed. Unfortunately, in many countries around the world, these systems are insufficiently addressed, which may raise ethical problems. Structural problems may undermine the web of prevention and alter the responsibilities attributed to the individual scientist within this system. Examples from sub-Saharan Africa illustrate two pertinent structural difficulties, and these are discussed in relation to ethical responsibilities.

Ferretting out the facts behind the H5N1 controversy

Recent recommendations by the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) to redact key methodological details of two studies involving mammal-to-mammal transmission of the H5N1 (H5) subtype influenza viruses, has led to a temporary moratorium on all research involving live H5N1 or H5 HA reassortant viruses shown to be transmissible in ferrets. Herein, I review the events which led to this impasse and comment on their impact.

Four Themes in Recent Swedish Bioethics Debates

A wide variety of bioethical themes have recently been debated and researched in Sweden, including genetic screening, HPV vaccination strategies, end-of-life care, injustices and priority setting in healthcare, dual-use research, and the never-ending story of scientific fraud. Also, there are some new events related to Swedish biobanking that might be of general interest. Here we will concentrate on four themes: end-of-life care, dual-use research, scientific fraud, and biobanking.