Research issues

SIPRI is conducting research on security issues connected to biological materials, research and technologies, including historical, legal, technical and political aspects. This includes consideration of the implementation of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), UN Security Council Resolution 1540 (2004) and the 2003 EU WMD Strategy.

Historical studies produced by project members include an analysis of pre-World War II biological weapon programmes (Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, Development and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945, SIPRI Chemical & Biological Warfare Studies no. 18, Oxford University Press, 1999) and a review of the Soviet biological weapon programme (Deadly Cultures, Harvard University Press, 2006).

In 2008 the project published an assessment of the 2001 anthrax letter attacks (Clevestig and Hart, 'Spores of War: Biosecurity in the US', Janes Intelligence Review (Nov. 2008)). In 2009 the project released a laboratory biosecurity handbook (Clevestig, Handbook of Applied Biosecurity for Life Science Laboratories). This publication is a product of a two-year project investigating laboratory biosecurity in the European context and follows up on work published in 2007 (Kuhlau, Counter Bio-threats: EU Instruments for Managing Biological Materials, Technology and Knowledge, SIPRI policy paper 19, 2007).

Other activities include the regular training of laboratory staff and professionals on biosecurity (within the context of Biosafety) through lectures, seminars and training courses. Further topics of interest being monitored include the establishment of microbial forensics as a tool for investigating biological events and the advancements in the area of synthetic biology and the security implications of this promising new scientific discipline.