![]() Leaders around the world must confront the possibility of global catastrophic biological risks. Laboratory biosafety and biosecurity programs are challenged by human error, confusion about lab safety requirements, limited understanding of novel disease characteristics, poor appreciation for the risks associated with some research, and lack of local government knowledge about the types of research occurring in labs in their jurisdictions. But as life sciences and associated technologies advance faster and faster, they outrace oversight regimes, strategies for risk assessment and risk mitigation, and the establishment of norms for scientific pursuit. Such capabilities inevitably lead to dual-use concerns. We live in a time of revolutionary advances in the life sciences and associated technologies. No doubt some of these could lead to better health outcomes for all. Researchers can engineer living things to acquire new traits with increasing ease and reliability, especially viruses that can be synthesized de novo in the laboratory. In response to these growing biological concerns, we have seen many welcome advances in research. The world’s ability to predict which of these viruses and microbes are most likely to cause human disease is woefully inadequate. There is immense, uncharacterized diversity within the 26 virus families and the many phyla of bacteria and other microbes known to infect humans. Zoonoses put the human population in danger of pandemics, a danger we should expect to increase as a changing climate alters animal migrations and behaviors and humans continue to push their built environment into more remote spaces. The number and diversity of infectious disease outbreaks has risen since 1980, with more than half caused by zoonotic diseases (that is, disease originating in animals and transmitted to humans). The war thwarts international cooperation exactly when we need cooperation most-to address pressing 21st-century threats such as climate change, mis- and disinformation, and a problem we and others know quite well: the proliferation of biological threats.ĭevastating events like the COVID-19 pandemic can no longer be considered rare, once-a-century occurrences. The impact of this war on the global order has implications far beyond the nuclear realm and the battlefield more generally. We moved it largely (though not exclusively) because of the mounting dangers, both direct and indirect, of the war in Ukraine. (See the accompanying statement we published alongside the time change.) ![]() ![]() Last Tuesday, we and the other members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board moved the iconic Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been. ![]()
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