Dual-use research debates and public health: better integration would do no harm

ECDC comment

​This opinion article authored by ECDC staff, published in the Frontiers journal, gives a new light to the dual-use debate. Certain life science research could potentially have a malevolent use and therefore harmful consequences for public health.

​This opinion article authored by ECDC staff, published in the Frontiers journal, gives a new light to the dual-use debate. Certain life science research could potentially have a malevolent use and therefore harmful consequences for public health. This paper demonstrates how important it is to have a better integration of the public health sector in the discussions around the dual-use dilemma. 

ECDC comment 

The public health sector could indeed contribute more substantially to the debate, guide policy decisions, and promote actions along all phases of the research life-cycle. There is room for improvement for how public health rationales are applied to analysis and estimation of the risks and benefits of certain types of research with dual-use potential. The call for better integration of public health perspectives in the debate on dual-use issues is a welcome view. However, the way forward will require further considerations of the best mechanisms and fora for doing so. ECDC will continue to foster engagement through continued discussion of the dual-use issues in research with a range of public health experts working in the area of infectious diseases. An upcoming opportunity will be at the applied epidemiology conference (ESCAIDE) in a panel discussion ‘Primum non nocere - Why engineer microbes to be more dangerous to humankind’ (6 Nov 6th, 2014).

Read the article in the Frontiers journal