Edited by: Kathleen Vogel, Cornell University, USA
Reviewed by: Kathleen Vogel, Cornell University, USA; Luis Campos, University of New Mexico, USA
This article was submitted to Infectious Diseases, a section of the journal Frontiers in Public Health.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Synthetic biology, a field that aims to “make biology easier to engineer,” is routinely described as leading to an increase in the “dual-use” threat, i.e., the potential for the same scientific research to be “used” for peaceful purposes or “misused” for warfare or terrorism. Fears have been expressed that the “de-skilling” of biology, combined with online access to the genomic DNA sequences of pathogenic organisms and the reduction in price for DNA synthesis, will make biology increasingly accessible to people operating outside well-equipped professional research laboratories, including people with malevolent intentions. The emergence of do-it-yourself (DIY) biology communities and of the student iGEM competition has come to epitomize this supposed trend toward greater ease of access and the associated potential threat from rogue actors. In this article, we identify five “myths” that permeate discussions about synthetic biology and biosecurity, and argue that they embody misleading assumptions about both synthetic biology and bioterrorism. We demonstrate how these myths are challenged by more realistic understandings of the scientific research currently being conducted in both professional and DIY laboratories, and by an analysis of historical cases of bioterrorism. We show that the importance of tacit knowledge is commonly overlooked in the dominant narrative: the focus is on access to biological materials and digital information, rather than on human practices and institutional dimensions. As a result, public discourse on synthetic biology and biosecurity tends to portray speculative scenarios about the future as realities in the present or the near future, when this is not warranted. We suggest that these “myths” play an important role in defining synthetic biology as a “promissory” field of research and as an “emerging technology” in need of governance.
“Synthetic biology strives to make the engineering of biology easier and more predictable.” [(
A dominant narrative has emerged in policy arenas, in which advances in the biosciences are seen to make biology easier and more accessible, and this is presumed to increase the so-called “dual-use” threat, i.e., the potential for the same scientific research to be “used” for peaceful purposes or “misused” for warfare or terrorism. Developments in synthetic biology, a field that emerged at the start of the twenty-first century with the stated aim of “making biology easier to engineer” (
In this article, we analyze this dominant narrative and identify five “myths” that permeate discussions about synthetic biology and biosecurity. We describe each of these myths and provide illustrative examples of how they are deployed in policy arenas. We then demonstrate how each of these myths is challenged by more realistic understandings of the scientific research currently being conducted in both professional and DIY laboratories, and by an analysis of historical cases of bioterrorism. In particular, we show that the importance of tacit knowledge is commonly overlooked in the dominant narrative: the focus is on access to biological materials and digital information, rather than on human practices and institutional dimensions. Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley and Kathleen Vogel have argued, on the basis on their in-depth analysis of the US and Soviet biowarfare programs, that there are important intangible barriers to the proliferation of biological weapons (
Tacit knowledge is crucial to conduct advanced bioscience research, and is by definition difficult to share. This is encapsulated by Polanyi’s remark that “
Ben Ouagrham-Gormley and Vogel, and Revill and Jefferson, argue that a better understanding of tacit knowledge could improve the assessments of the dual-use threat posed by modern biotechnologies. Yet, tacit knowledge continues to be overlooked in policy arenas. In this paper, we examine the way in which the biosecurity threat posed by synthetic biology has been framed within the dominant narrative that permeates scientific and policy arenas. We identify five recurring “myths” that emerge from this analysis:
Myth 1: synthetic biology is de-skilling biology and making it easier for terrorists to exploit advances in the biosciences; Myth 2: synthetic biology has led to the growth of a DIY biology community, which could offer dual-use knowledge, tools, and equipment for bioterrorists seeking to do harm; Myth 3: DNA synthesis has become cheaper and can be out-sourced, and this will make it easier for terrorists to create biological threat agents; Myth 4: synthetic biology could be used to design radically new pathogens; Myth 5: terrorists want to pursue biological weapons for high consequence, mass casualty attacks.
The use of the term “myths” is not intended here to imply falsity. We are not simplistically opposing “myth” and “reality,” and we are not arguing that there is no threat. Rather, our aim is to convey the pervasiveness of misleading assumptions about both synthetic biology and bioterrorism that frequently underlie discussions about the dual-use threat of synthetic biology, and to draw out some of the subtleties that frequently disappear from these discussions. Moreover, we do acknowledge that these myths have power and perform real functions such as mobilizing support, resources, and action. Thus, the dominant narrative identified in this paper helps to bring into being a particular hoped-for future, and attributes roles and influence to different actors. It influences the way in which the problem is defined, and thus the kinds of solutions that are proposed. These “myths” are real enough to influence policy in significant ways and that why it is important to examine them more carefully.
The research presented here draws on participant observation in scientific and policy arenas, and on a review of a wide range of written materials.
All three authors have been participant-observers in either synthetic biology arenas, or biosecurity arenas, or both, for a number of years. Filippa Lentzos has been regularly attending and actively participating in a wide range of events on biosecurity, biological arms control and non-proliferation for over a decade. Catherine Jefferson has been involved in discussions on bioweapons, biosecurity and arms control for a decade. Claire Marris has been attending and participating in a wide range of scientific and policy events on synthetic biology for 5 years. Filippa Lentzos has been engaged in the field of synthetic biology for the last 7 years. The synthetic biology events include scientific meetings ranging from large-scale international conferences such as those in the SBx.0 series to laboratory meetings at the Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation (CSynBI) that all three authors are members of, or informal conversations with CSynBI and other collaborators in the field of synthetic biology. Our involvement also includes participation in expert committees and working groups, and public debates organized by scientific organizations.
The key insights reported in this paper emerged from this immersion in the worlds of synthetic biology and biosecurity, which provided the authors with regular opportunities to interact with synthetic biologists, government officials, security analysts, technical experts, diplomats, public health officials, law enforcement agents, DIY biologists, and others who have assembled around the “problem” of synthetic biology “misuse.” These interactions took place in “natural” settings (as opposed to, for example, an interview setting), in places and during events that these actors – and the authors – were participating in through the course of their work.
It is through this fieldwork that we became aware of the prevalence of particular ways of framing the issues at stake, and were able to analyze how actors mobilized particular arguments. This was complemented by a review of written materials, which has been utilized mostly to confirm the hypotheses developed through our fieldwork, and to select citations to illustrate our results. This was necessary because many of the meetings that we participated in were not public and/or were not recorded, so it is not technically possible to provide verbatim quotations from those events. Moreover, in most cases, providing such quotations would not be compatible with research ethics. The documents reviewed are mostly from the “gray” literature: reports produced by scientific and biosecurity institutions. But they also include relevant academic articles, websites, blogs, and print media. The key criteria for selection of documents and citations were that they should be produced or written by key institutions or influential individuals in the fields of synthetic biology and/or biosecurity, for example: Drew Endy, Rob Carlson, George Church as leaders in the field of synthetic biology; Jonathan Tucker, Tara O’Toole, and Laurie Garrett as US experts in the field of biosecurity; Markus Schmidt as a key European commentator on “ethical, legal, and social issues” related to synthetic biology; US government officials and politicians; and institutions such as the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), the European Commission, the US National Academy of Science, the US National Research Council, the US National Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) and the UK Royal Academy of Engineering. Moreover, the illustrative citations are taken mostly from documents and from (individual or institutional) authors that are themselves routinely cited by actors in discussions about synthetic biology and biosecurity.
Ethnographic data from participant observation and the literature review was complemented by a 1-day workshop convened by the authors at King’s College London on 28th February 2014 (
Founding leaders in synthetic biology have argued that developments in the field would lead to a situation where biology would not only become “easier to engineer,” but that it would become easier for
The idea that synthetic biology could make it easier for non-specialists, including those working outside of institutions, to exploit this powerful technology for both benevolent and malevolent purposes, has to a large extent become a hallmark of the field. For example, in an article entitled “Diffusion of synthetic biology: a challenge to biosafety” Markus Schmidt, who was the leader of the first European Commission-funded project on the “Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues” of the field (SYNBIOSAFE) and who has become a prominent commentator on the risks involved, has argued, in a paper that has been cited 52 times in Google Scholar (accessed 10th July 2014), that:
With this “de-skilling” agenda, synthetic biology might finally unleash the full potential of biotechnology and spark a wave of innovation, as more and more people have the necessary skills to engineer biology [( Synthetic biology includes, as a principal part of its agenda, a sustained, well-funded assault on the necessity of tacit knowledge in bioengineering and thus on one of the most important current barriers to the production of biological weapons [( Ethical issues arise particularly from dangers of using synthetic lethal and virulent pathogens for terrorist attacks, bio-war, or maleficent uses (“garage terrorism”, “bio-hacking”), particularly if knowledge and skills on how to produce such pathogens are freely available [(
These concerns are based on the assumption that synthetic biology already has made it, or shortly will make it, easy
Moreover, synthetic biologists who participated in our recent workshop (
A useful analogy to aeronautical engineering was used at the workshop to illustrate this. Planes are built from a large number of well-characterized parts in a systematic way, but this does not mean that any member of the general public can build a plane, make it fly, and use it for commercial transportation. Thus, it is too simplistic to suggest that if synthetic biology becomes an engineering discipline it will necessarily become easier for anybody to engineer biological systems, including dangerous ones. More care needs to be taken in the interpretation of statements about how synthetic biology will lead to “de-skilling” and “make the engineering of biology easier.”
Furthermore, the experiences of iGEM teams tend to demonstrate the challenges of successfully performing synthetic biology experiments, and demonstrate the ongoing need for guided instruction and collective expertise. iGEM is the annual International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, which brings together undergraduate students from across a range of disciplines to work collaboratively to design and build biological systems and operate them in living cells. The iGEM competition is linked to the parts-based approach to synthetic biology through its contributions to the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, and provides a proof-of-principle for the synthetic biology agenda (
iGEM teams typically receive considerable guidance from senior faculty members and, while iGEM is a collaborative exercise, biologically trained students still tend to be the ones who have the central roles in daily laboratory activity. Balmer and Bulpin ( Over the course of the project, as time pressures became more significant, it became natural, when assigning the activities of the day, for them to conduct the procedures in which they had each become experts, as otherwise it would require them teaching someone else. […] As one of them explained: “From the start I had the idea that I would take a main role in modelling but also get some experience in the lab. However, I quickly gave up on lab work after the first few weeks because both teams found that many protocols were not streamlined as descriptions of synthetic biology often present. There was a great deal of tedious work, which involved small volumes of clear liquid and lots of waiting time. Many cycles of failed experiments had to be repeated (p. 306). […] the reality of everyday design-experiment-fail-redesign (and so on…) cycles serves as a sobering reminder that the foundations of synthetic biology were not then (when I was in the field in 2009), and are not yet (2011), stable. Many experiments don’t work out as planned because many BioBricks from the Registry don’t function reliably. Presently, engineering that is accomplished with BioBricks in one lab and described in a standard fashion, certainly does not guarantee that the same result is reproducible in another lab (p. 307–308).
The challenge of acquiring the specialist skill sets to perform laboratory work is also demonstrated by the experiences of some members of the DIY biology (DIYbio) community.
DIY biologists typically comprise a wide range of participants of varying levels of expertise, ranging from complete novices with no prior background in biology, to trained scientists who conduct DIY experiments in their own time. The experiences of amateur DIY biologists demonstrate how a lack of indoctrination in the practices of biology can present significant challenges. As Revill and Jefferson ( For example, the London Biohacker group […] have noted the challenge of overcoming “pipetting errors” when trying to optimise techniques for DNA extraction and PCR process. MadLab, a bio group based at the Manchester Digital Laboratory, experienced similar difficulties during their “PCR challenge,” in which they pitched their home-made Arduino-based PCR machine against the open-source OpenPCR kit and the commercial PCR at Manchester Metropolitan University: …“the hardest part of the process was getting our samples into the gel using a micropipette. It turns out there is a bit of an art to pipetting … The more experienced pipettors claimed that it took them weeks to get the proper technique.” (p. 6)
At the workshop recently convened by the authors, an interesting tension was revealed. On the one hand, if tacit knowledge remains important in synthetic biology, then this implies that it will not be easily accessible to outsiders and this reduces concerns about the dual-use threat. On the other hand, if synthetic biology is an engineering discipline
Developments in synthetic biology are seen to be closely associated with the growth of the DIYbio community, and concerns are expressed that this could offer knowledge, tools, and equipment to bioterrorists seeking to do harm. This was a key thrust in Carlson’s 2003 article, which started with the phrase: “The advent of the home molecular laboratory is not far off.” Schmidt also stressed this notion in his 2008 article, saying, for example: “[Imagine] a world where practically anybody with an average IQ would have the ability to create novel organisms in their home garage” [( The reagents and tools used in synthetic biology will eventually be converted into commercial kits, making it easier for biohackers to acquire them. Moreover, as synthetic biology training becomes increasingly available to students at the college and possibly high-school levels, a “hacker culture” may emerge, increasing the risk of reckless or malevolent experimentation [( As synthetic biology techniques become easier and less expensive and the applications become more widely relevant, the range of practitioners expands to include scientists from a variety of disciplines; students at all levels, including high school; and amateur scientists and hobbyists who may lack any formal affiliations with universities or research institutions. The diversity of practitioners will also include individuals of different ages and varied social and educational backgrounds who may not have been sensitized to the ethical social and legal norms of the traditional life science research communities [( The threat may be changing with the continued advancement of synthetic biology applications. Coupled with the ease of information sharing and a rapidly growing do-it-yourself-biology (DIYbio) movement, the chances of not only more attacks but potentially more deadly ones will inevitably increase (
The link between synthetic biology and DIYbio, and the level of sophistication of the experiments typically being performed in DIYbio community labs, is overstated (
Furthermore, members of the DIYbio community tend to be proactive in addressing and engaging with safety and security concerns and many community labs have strict rules about access (
DNA synthesis is one of the key enabling technologies of synthetic biology. There are now a number of commercial companies that provide DNA synthesis services, so the process can be out-sourced: a client can order a DNA sequence online and receive the synthesized DNA material by post within days or weeks. The price charged by these companies has greatly reduced over the last 20 years, and is now around 0.3 US$ per base pair, which puts it within reach of a broad range of actors. This has led to routine statements suggesting that it is now cheap and easy to obtain a synthesized version of any desired DNA sequence. This popularized image of DNA synthesis is well represented by the Wikipedia entry (accessed 02/07/2014) for “artificial gene synthesis,” which states that: “it is possible to make a completely synthetic double-stranded DNA molecule with no apparent limits on either nucleotide sequence or size.”
Rob Carlson first published his now famous “Carlson curves,” illustrating the increasing productivity and reducing cost of DNA synthesis, in an article in the journal
The key concern raised has been that bioterrorists could create dangerous viruses or other pathogens “from scratch,” meaning without access to the biological material from nature, from a strain repository, or from a laboratory. Instead, they would start with DNA or RNA genomic sequences for pathogenic viruses and bacterial pathogens that are increasingly freely available online. Such fears were heightened in 2002 by an experiment in which poliovirus was synthesized without the use of any natural virus or viral components (
As Garfinkel et al. [(
Together, the reconstruction of poliovirus and Spanish influenza virus have come to epitomize the threat narrative that DNA synthesis has become faster and cheaper, and that this will make it easier for terrorists to create biological threat agents. This is illustrated by statements from biosecurity experts such as Jonathan Tucker and Raymond Zilinskas One potential misuse of synthetic biology would be to recreate known pathogens (such as the Ebola virus) in the laboratory as a means of circumventing the legal and physical controls on access to “select agents” that pose a bioterrorism risk. Indeed, the feasibility of assembling an entire, infectious viral genome from a set of synthetic oligonucleotides has already been demonstrated for poliovirus and the Spanish influenza virus [( Synthetic biologists have already shown how terrorists could obtain life forms that now exist only in carefully guarded facilities, such as polio and 1918 influenza samples [( An editorial in a prestigious scientific journal reporting on the successful decoding and manipulation of the genetic sequence of the influenza A virus noted that “one can only speculate as to how quickly our knowledge….will progress, now that every nucleotide of the viral genome can be mutated and engineered back into the genome, in nearly endless combinations with other mutations.” […] Using such technologies, which have been utilized to investigate Ebola, pandemic flu, influenza, hanta viruses, lassa, rabies, and Marburg viruses, there is no need for a bioweaponeer to isolate the virus from an infected patient, acquire it from a germ bank, or culture it from nature. All the required starting materials, such as cell lines and DNA synthesizers, are widely available and used for many beneficent purposes. And the sequences for a growing variety of viruses that infect humans, animals and plants, including Ebola, pandemic influenza, and smallpox, are published in the open literature [( More than a decade ago, the Defense Science Board affirmed that, “there are no technical barriers to a large-scale bioattack.” We are living in the midst of a biotechnology revolution where the knowledge and tools needed to acquire and disseminate a biological weapon are increasingly accessible. It is possible today to manipulate pathogens’ characteristics (e.g., virulence, antibiotic resistance), and even to synthesize viruses from scratch. These procedures will inexorably become simpler and more available across the globe as technology continues to mature ( With the spread of synthetic biology, some small scale research groups and even some individuals are now able to make the deadly Ebola and smallpox viruses and even some viruses against which all drugs are ineffective, thus making it much harder to counter bioterrorism. Furthermore, it has become much easier to obtain sensitive information. Using publicly available DNA sequences, terrorists can quickly synthesize pathogenic microbes that had previously been eradicated. [( These technologies [enabling technologies, including high-throughput systems for sequencing, synthesizing and analyzing DNA; bioinformatics and computational tools; and systems biology] could potentially be used for purposes contrary to the Convention, including making pathogens or toxins easier and less expensive to manufacture All the key barriers to the artificial synthesis of viruses and bacteria have been overcome, at least on a proof-of-principle basis ( Non-state actors who wish to employ biological agents for ill intent are sure to be aware of how tangible bio-weapons are becoming as applications of synthetic biology become more affordable and the probability of success increases with each scientific breakthrough ( While the likelihood of misuse of oligos to gain access to nearly extinct human viruses (e.g. polio) or novel pathogens (like IL-4-poxvirus) is small, the consequences loom larger than chemical and nuclear weapons, since biohazards are inexpensive, can spread rapidly world-wide and evolve on their own ( today, any synthesis of viruses, even very small or relatively simple viruses, remains relatively difficult. In the near future, however, the risk of nefarious use will rise because of the increasing speed and capability of the technology and its widening accessibility. […] Ten years from now, it may be easier to synthesize almost any pathogenic virus than to obtain it through other means [( Like any powerful technology, DNA synthesis has the potential to be purposefully misapplied. Misuse of DNA-synthesis technology could give rise to both known and unforeseeable threats to our biological safety and security [(
When speaking about DNA synthesis, it is useful to distinguish between (a) the synthesis of oligonucleotides, commonly referred to as “oligos,” which are typically less than 100 nucleotides in length; (b) “gene synthesis,” a term used to refer to the
There are a number of ways in which DNA synthesis could be used to create a synthetic viral genome [(
Ordering short oligos and then assembling them into a genome was the method used in the polio and Spanish flu experiments, but this required specialist expertise, experience, and equipment, which were all available in the academic laboratories involved but would not be easily accessible to an amateur working from home. Obtaining the oligos (as was done by
The second challenge to Myth 3 is that, contrary to what is stated in Wikipedia, and what is often implied in the policy discourse described above, even specialized DNA synthesis companies cannot easily synthesize Today, reconstructions of complete viral and bacterial genomes are testaments of how far our synthetic capabilities have come. Despite the improvements, our ability to read DNA is better than our ability to write it [(
The third challenge is that for sequences longer than 5–10 kb,
The fourth challenge to Myth 3 relates to cost. The price of gene synthesis has declined greatly over the last 20 years, and the policy discourse that underlies biosecurity fears often implies that it will naturally become even cheaper over time, and thus widely affordable. The decline in price has, however, more or less stagnated around 0.3 US$ per base pair since 2008; and Carlson (
The fifth and fundamental challenge to Myth 3 is that constructing a genome size DNA fragment is not the same as creating a functional genome. In particular, ensuring the desired expression of viral proteins is a complex challenge, which has been well documented in Vogel’s ( As this case study illustrates, successful replication of the published 2002 poliovirus experiment hinges not only on the availability of the genetic sequence of the virus, commercial pieces of DNA, or the posting of the publication on the internet but also on the ability to master the mundane yet idiosyncratic biological techniques and adhere to specific laboratory disciplines [(
Additional challenges to Myth 3 include the fact that while DNA or RNA sequence data are available for many pathogenic viruses, genomes published in publicly available databases can contain errors or may be derived from attenuated laboratory strains (
In addition to recreating dangerous viruses, concerns have also been expressed that synthetic biology could be used to enhance the virulence or increase the transmissibility of known pathogens in order to create novel threat agents.
The 2001 mousepox experiment is the most widely cited examples of the dual-use potential of life science research and has come to epitomize the potential to create more virulent viruses. In this experiment, researchers inserted the gene for interleukin-4 into the mousepox virus (
An early, formative report that shaped concerns about radically new pathogens was The effects of naturally occurring pathogens are limited by the evolutionary advantage gained by not eliminating their hosts. Among the many implications of the anticipated progress in biotechnology is the presumption that it may be feasible to create novel biological agents that are far more predictable and dangerous than any of the naturally occurring pathogens that have been developed as biological weapons in the past. It may be difficult to engineer a more successful pathogen than those already present in nature that have been perfected by evolution for their niche in life. However, application of the new genetic technologies makes the creation of “designer diseases” and pathogens with increased military utility more likely [( The possibility of designing a new virus or bacterium “ Experts felt that as an enabling tool, synthetic biology […] would in the long term likely facilitate the work of those attempting to acquire and use biological weapons. More dangerous and controllable pathogens could be engineered that lead to novel possibilities in designing bioweapons. Advances in modeling could enable improvements in weapons design. Metabolic engineering might confer new qualities and attributes upon agents and offer options for new types of weapons. […] This could have the negative effect of making bioweapons cheaper and easier to acquire, making their use eventually more likely; more reliable and controllable, making them more desirable; and more effective, increasing their potential impact [(
Influential experts have also highlighted concerns about “super-pathogens,” for instance Marc Collett, a virologist who was commissioned by the JCVI to provide advice for their work on the risks and benefits of synthetic genomics, concluded that:
While nature has provided would-be terrorists an ample supply and selection of quite virulent viruses, there is concern that genetic technologies will be used to modify these already pathogenic agents and create “super-pathogens,” viruses that are more lethal and disruptive than naturally occurring pathogens, and that are designed to evade vaccines or to be resistant to drugs [( Synthetic biology’s efforts to reprogram life have raised concerns in some quarters that the technology could one day be used to make radically new weapons, such as pathogens that could be narrowly targeted towards populations with known genetic susceptibilities [( a simple, ubiquitous microbe such as
The mousepox and H5N1 experiments are frequently cited to demonstrate how dangerous new pathogens could be designed. However, assessments of this threat tend to overlook the fact that, in both these experiments, the researchers did not actually
Moreover, some of the key lessons that came out of the extensive Soviet program to weaponize biological agents were about the trade-offs between improving characteristics that are “desired,” in the context of a bioweapons program, such as virulence, and diminishing other equally “desired” characteristics, like transmissibility or stability. One project, for example, aimed to develop strains of Everyone who has ever dealt with the genetics of bacteria knows how complicated it is to produce a new strain, indeed, to create a new species! [quoted in ( The most difficult problems had to do with pleiotropic effects and a lack of stability in engineered strains. Antibiotic-resistant cells had a distressing habit of losing virulence or exhibiting lesser yields (or both) when propagated in culture. As for stability […] when the construct for resistance to one antibiotic was introduced into the host cell, an earlier emplaced construct was often lost. This sort of problem required additional rounds of research, which were both labor intensive and time consuming [(
Underlying the first four myths are certain assumptions about who the terrorists might actually be, what their intentions are, what capabilities they might pursue, and the level of skills and resources available to them. Despite a lack of analysis of the potential adversaries involved in the misuse of life science research, the bioterrorism threat has generally been portrayed in policy circles as an imminent concern, and emphasis is placed on high consequence, mass casualty attacks, performed with “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD).
For example, in one of the President George W. Bush’s earliest statements following 9/11 and the “anthrax letter” attacks that drew the American people’s attention to the biological weapons threat, he said:
Since September 11, America and others have been confronted by the evils these [biological] weapons can inflict. This threat is real and extremely dangerous. Rogue states and terrorists possess these weapons and are willing to use them ( Unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013. The Commission further believes that terrorists are more likely to be able to obtain and use a biological weapon than a nuclear weapon. The Commission believes that the U.S. government needs to move more aggressively to limit the proliferation of biological weapons and reduce the prospect of a bioterror attack [( Naturally occurring disease remains a serious biological threat; however, a thinking enemy armed with these same pathogens — or with multi-drug-resistant or synthetically engineered pathogens — could produce catastrophic consequences. A small team of individuals with graduate training in several key disciplines, using equipment readily available for purchase on the Internet could produce the type of bioweapons created by nation-states in the 1960s. Even more troubling, the rapid advances in biotechnology, such as synthetic biology, will allow non-state actors to produce increasingly powerful bioweapons in the future [(
The senators were not alone in their assessments. For instance, the US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist made a similar warning in an earlier speech outlining the global threat of infectious disease and bioterrorism, and the need to better prepare the US and the world to respond to epidemics and outbreaks:
No intelligence agency, no matter how astute, and no military, no matter how powerful and dedicated, can assure that a few technicians of middling skill using a few thousand dollars worth of readily available equipment in a small and apparently innocuous setting cannot mount a first-order biological attack … Never have we had to fight such a battle, to protect so many people against so many threats that are so silent and so lethal ( The advances in science and technology make it […] easier for states and non-state actors to develop biological weapons. A crude, but effective, terrorist weapon can be made by using a small sample of any number of widely available pathogens, inexpensive equipment, and college-level chemistry and biology ( I know there are some in the international community who have their doubts about the odds of a mass biological attack or major outbreak. They point out that we have not seen either so far, and conclude the risk must be low. But that is not the conclusion of the United States, because there are warning signs, and they are too serious to ignore (
There are two dimensions to Myth 5. The first is about the intention of would-be terrorists, and the assumption is that terrorists would seek to produce mass casualty weapons and pursue capabilities on the scale of twentieth century state-level bioweapons programs. While most leading biological disarmament and non-proliferation experts believe that the risk of a small-scale bioterrorism attack is very real and very present, they consider the risk of sophisticated large-scale bioterrorism attacks to be very small (
The second dimension to Myth 5 is the implicit assumption that producing a pathogenic organism equates producing a weapon of mass destruction. It does not. Considerable knowledge and resources are necessary for the processes of scaling up, storage, and developing a suitable dissemination method. These processes present significant technical and logistical barriers. Drawing from her in-depth study of the Iraqi, Soviet, and US bioweapons programs ( Scaling up fragile microorganisms that are sensitive to environmental conditions and susceptible to change — and viruses are more sensitive than bacteria — has been one of the stiffest challenges for past bioweapons programs to overcome, even with appropriate expertise at hand. Scaling-up requires a gradual approach, moving from laboratory sample, to a larger laboratory quantity, to pilot-scale production, and then to even larger-scale production. During each stage, the production parameters need to be tested and often modified to maintain the lethal qualities of the agent; the entire scaling-up process can take several years (
The most likely way to inflict mass casualties with a biological agent is by disseminating it as a respirable aerosol: an invisible cloud of infectious droplets or particles so tiny that they remain suspended in the air for long periods and can be inhaled by large numbers of people. A high-concentration aerosol of
The Aum Shinrikyo cult struggled with dissemination (
In another dissemination attempt, targeting the area around the Kanagawa prefectural office and the Imperial Palace, the Aum equipped vehicles with spraying devices, but according to prosecutors’ statements, the nozzle of the sprayer clogged and the operation failed. Despite its 200 m2 laboratory containing, amongst other equipment, a glove box, incubator, centrifuge, drier, DNA/RNA synthesizer, electron microscope, two fermenters each having about a 2,000 litre capacity, and an extensive scientific library, and despite its repeated attempts at dissemination, the Aum was unsuccessful in causing any disease, and in retrospect it is clear that the cult did not even make the first substantive step toward an effective bioweapon.
If, despite the odds, aerosolization was achieved, the effective delivery of biological agents in the open air is highly dependent on atmospheric and wind conditions, creating additional uncertainties. Only under highly stable atmospheric conditions would the aerosol cloud remain close to the ground where it can be inhaled, rather than being rapidly dispersed. Moreover, most microorganisms are sensitive to ultraviolet radiation and cannot survive more than 30 min in bright sunlight, limiting their use to night-time attacks. One major exception is anthrax, which can be induced to form spores with tough outer coats that enable them to survive for several hours in sunlight. Terrorists could, of course, stage a biological attack inside an enclosed space such as a building, a subway station, a shopping mall, or a sports arena. Such an attack, if it involved a respiratory aerosol, might infect thousands of people, but even here the technical hurdles would by no means be trivial.
Finally, even if a biological weapon had been disseminated successfully, the outcome of an attack would be affected by factors like the health of the people who are exposed to the agent, and the speed and manner with which public health authorities and medical professionals detected and were able to respond to the resulting outbreak. A prompt response with effective medical countermeasures, such as antibodies and vaccination, can significantly blunt the impact of an attack. Simple, proven ways to curtail epidemics, such as wearing face masks, hand washing, and avoiding hospitals where transmission rates might soar, can also prove effective in stemming the spread of a disease. Indeed, this aspect of a bioterrorism attack is often underplayed in scenarios like Tara O’Toole’s “Dark Winter” and “Atlantic Storm,” where the rates of contagion used are often significantly higher than those in historical cases of natural outbreaks (
We have identified a number of assumptions that underlie policy discourse on the biosecurity threat posed by synthetic biology. We characterize these assumptions as “myths” that pervade discussion on this issue and have identified important challenges to those myths. In particular, we argue that the myths overlook significant difficulties faced when seeking to design and/or produce a pathogen because they focus mostly on material features, thus missing important socio-technical factors, such as tacit knowledge. We have also shown that this dominant narrative underestimates a crucial step needed to mount a terrorist attack, especially a mass attack: the need to produce weapons, not just pathogens. Thus, we conclude that the five myths that recur in the dominant narrative embody misleading assumptions about both synthetic biology and bioterrorism.
The purpose of identifying and challenging these “myths” is not to dismiss the threat of a bioweapons attack. Of course, it is prudent to take measures to prepare against the possibility of a biological weapons attack and concerted action across a policy continuum that extends from prevention through preparedness to consequence management is necessary. However, as we have demonstrated, any bioterrorism attack will most likely be one using a pathogen strain with less than optimal characteristics disseminated through crude delivery methods under imperfect conditions, and the potential casualties of such an attack are likely to be much lower than the mass casualty scenarios frequently portrayed. This is not to say that speculative thinking should be discounted as it can, in some policy contexts, be helpful to represent possible, though not necessarily probable, future scientific developments, in order to encourage thinking on long-term security challenges. However, problems arise when these speculative scenarios for the future are distorted and portrayed as scientific reality in the present, which, as this paper demonstrates, has occurred in policy narratives related to synthetic biology and biosecurity.
We have shown that much of the debate in policy forums about the biosecurity threat of synthetic biology is based on naïve and simplistic interpretations of synthetic biology’s ability to “make biology easier to engineer,” and in particular on the misleading assumption that the skills and knowledge necessary to perform synthetic biology will necessarily become accessible to people with no specialist expertise working outside professional scientific institutions, including hostile actors who would seek to misuse the technology to develop biological weapons.
In order to understand why such myths develop and persist, it is important to consider the role that they play in the social dynamics of synthetic biology. Drawing on the literature in the sociology of expectations (
With respect to synthetic biology, different communities of actors stress particular issues in particular contexts. This frames the debate in particular ways and plays an important role in constructing and maintaining resources and support for each of these communities. For example, scientists such as Rob Carlson, George Church, or Drew Endy, who are heavily engaged in the promotion of synthetic biology, need to portray an optimistic vision of the potential of the engineering approach to biology as part of their endeavors to develop support for a new field of research which they believe has great significance and potential. Actors in the security field (including some policy makers, social scientists, and natural scientists) play a different role and often exaggerate the “dual-use threat” in order to attract attention and resources to their own work. Researchers from our own field of science and technology studies (STS) are not immune from such processes: we will generally seek to emphasize the complexity of real world situations and the importance of social dimensions of science, in order to justify the need for our expertise. However, at least until now, STS framings have had less influence on the dominant narrative than the discourse mobilized by actors from the fields of synthetic biology and biosecurity. Thus, the myths we have discussed in this paper have played an important role in defining synthetic biology as a “promissory” field of research and as an “emerging science and technology” in need of scenario forecasting, regulation and governance. Our aim is not to denigrate the behavior of those who deploy these narratives. Rather, we suggest that when discourse is understood as something that seeks to change the social world, we can move beyond the battle that we have regularly encountered in discussions about synthetic biology, that focuses on whose prognosis is most accurate and whether or not “it is just hype” (
We believe that a better understanding and acknowledgment of the social dynamics at play would help to develop more productive discussions in which the different communities involved could move beyond simply promoting their own interests and perspectives. This is important because in some cases the discourse deployed can have unintended consequences that are detrimental to the interests of the actors themselves, and to the nature of public debate. Thus, overstating the “promise” of synthetic biology applications manifestly leads to parallel overstatements about the “perils” of the field: the promissory discourse of synthetic biology is bolstered by the “promised peril” of misuse by malevolent actors. The fact that these myths (or at least the first 4) serve to bolster the positive promises of synthetic biology helps to explain why these myths continue to persist, despite the fact that they do not accurately reflect current or foreseeable realities for the practice of synthetic biology. This is somewhat incongruous since the hoped-for futures of the actors who promote the benevolent development of synthetic biology do not, of course, include large-scale fatal bioterrorist attacks.
If we are to disentangle synthetic biology and biosecurity concerns, and to have a more refined assessment of both the biosecurity threat and the anticipated benefits, we believe that it is necessary to have more nuanced discussions about the extent to which synthetic biology is, or ever will be, an engineering discipline, and whether, in practice, this would reduce the importance of tacit knowledge, specialist expertise of different kinds, collective work, large infrastructures, and organizational factors. Such discussions would need to identify those aspects of the work that would become easier – in the sense that they can, for example, be automated and reliably performed by a robot – and those which are likely to remain difficult, in the sense that they still require craft skills to be successfully achieved. This would need to take into account not only the material and informational aspects but also other important socio-technical dimensions that will shape the development of the field.
The three authors are listed in alphabetical order and have all contributed equally to this paper, including the conception, analysis and data collection of the research, drafting the text, and revising it critically for intellectual content.
This research was conducted at the Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation (CSynBI), which is a partnership between synthetic biology researchers at Imperial College London and social scientists at the Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine at King’s College London. CSynBI seeks to influence the trajectory of synthetic biology and contribute to the development of an appropriate governance regime.
This research was supported by two awards from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/G036004/1 and EP/J02175X/1). Filippa Lentzos was supported by a UK Economic and Social Research Council award (RES-070-27-0003). The authors would like to thank all the participants at the workshop held at King’s College in February 2014, which has informed this research. We would also like to thank Jane Calvert, Piers Millett, Kathleen Vogel, and Luis Campos for providing useful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
1A list of some of our higher profile engagements can be found here:
2Gautam Mukunda is now at the Harvard Business School.
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7Jonathan B. Tucker was at this time a senior fellow at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, where he specialized in biological and chemical weapons issues. Raymond Zilinskas was and still is the director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at CNS.
8Stephen Maurer was then and still is at the University of California-Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and Director of the Goldman School Project on Information Technology and Homeland Security. Laurie Zoloth was and still is Professor of Bioethics at Northwestern University.
9Laurie Garrett is a science writer with a special interest in emerging infectious diseases, global health and biosecurity. She works at the Council on Foreign Relations Council, a think-tank that publishes the journal
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