Time for Biosafety Level 5
This project won the "Other Exceptional Project" prize on our Pandemics (May 2024) course. The text below is an excerpt from the final project.
Introduction
In the spring of 2024, the Biden Administration made a controversial decision: to continue allowing research involving Pathogens with Enhanced Pandemic Potential (PEPPs). These experiments, which involve the modification of naturally occurring
pathogens to increase their transmissibility or virulence, could lead to significant benefits, such as the acceleration of vaccine and antiviral development. However, the inherent risks of PEPP research accidents are global and catastrophic. Lab escape of
the wrong PEPP could cause a global pandemic. Current lab safety standards, known as Biosafety Levels 1-4 (BSL 1-4) were created before PEPP research existed and are inadequate. A new Biosafety Level-5 (BSL-5) standard should be developed for PEPP
research that creates facilities that are remote, residential, secure, and most importantly, permanently quarantined. The redundancy of isolation and permanent quarantine makes these facilities effectively “fail-safe”. A PEPP accident at BSL-5
should only pose a hazard to staff, not the entire world.
The White House review of PEPP research was likely prompted by concern that a research accident involving PEPPs may have caused the COVID-19 pandemic. Serious debate continues about that question. The U.S. Intelligence Community is divided about the virus's origin and if it may have been genetically engineered. The FBI and Department of Energy (that controls nuclear arms and operates the national labs that do science-based intelligence work) assess that the pandemic began with a research accident.
The catastrophic risks of PEPP research demand serious debate about whether it should be conducted at all. This proposal leaves that debate aside, recognizing the likelihood that permissive policies will continue. As such it is sensible to consider risk-reduction measures. Establishing a new safety standard— (BSL-5) facilities — is a risk-reduction measure that both advocates and critics of PEPP research might support. With fresh memory of a COVID-19 pandemic that killed 20 million people and cost the United States alone upwards of $14 trillion dollars, bold biosafety proposals like PEPP-oriented BSL-5 facilities deserve consideration.
Full project
You can read the full project here.