Getting Started…
The following resources comprise the core component of this week’s content, providing ‘An Introduction to 21st Century Biorisk’. Once you’ve completed the readthrough below, please take the time to explore the resources labelled as ‘mandatory’ - these should take approximately five to ten minutes each to either watch, listen to or read. If you have the time or the inclination, you could also have a look through the ‘Optional Resources’ provided below and further expand upon your understanding of biorisk and pandemic prevention. The ‘Optional Resources’ typically take longer to work through (e.g. the Issues lecture on modern biorisk has a runtime of over an hour), so you might want to consider listening to any audio/video resources at 1.25x or 1.5x speed.
Once you’ve completed the introductory component for this week, return to the ‘Getting Started’ section and explore both of the additional sections linked below - one of which explores the concept of biorisk with respect to longtermism, whilst the other examines the prospect of bioweapons and biological hazards infiltrating civilisation via the natural world. You are required to complete the introductory readthrough and explore the mandatory resources associated with each section of additional content, but are not required to work through any of the optional content. That said, you’re also very welcome to dip in and pick out any resources which feel interesting to you - even if they don’t seem directly relevant to the issues you’re considering. Having completed all required content, you can begin to work on the week’s concluding activity, as detailed below.
Week 4: Write a short piece of informative text (between 300 and 500 words) analysing a specific pathogen (e.g. anthrax, smallpox, SARS-CoV-2) and discussing the ‘pandemic potential’ traits associated with that pathogen. You do not have to persuade the reader that this pathogen will cause the next ‘Disease X’ pandemic - you only have to explain why this pathogen could have pandemic potential. In order to ensure the rigour of your argumentation, please cite your sources and reference appropriately. You may include the resources provided throughout this programme as references for any points that you make.
Additional Content 🔬
An Introduction to 21st Century Biorisk
Whilst perhaps less eventful than the first twenty years of the previous century, the past two decades have sustained a massive upswing in biotechnological development. On the one hand, this rapid progress has allowed for the development of life-saving technologies - with scientists at the University of Pennsylvania pioneering a form of cancer immunotherapy utilising the patient’s own T-cells, which would be modified via CRISPR-Cas9 technology to better identify target receptors and to subsequently ‘kill’ the detected cancers. Furthermore, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have a myriad of applications - from regenerative medicine (due to their near infinite capacity for expansion, and potential to specialise into almost any somatic cell type) to disease modelling (holding particular promise for the study of neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s). On the other hand, however, the development of the field of synthetic biology has introduced the possibility of the creation of wholly synthetic organisms - pathogens produced without the restrictions associated with Darwinian evolution. In principle, as an obligatory cellular parasite, a virus capable of rapidly killing a host organism is ineffectual - as it requires the continued functionality of host cells to proliferate. For this reason, numerous viruses have co-evolved and even integrated with their hosts - to the point that approximately half of the human genome could consist of endogenous retroviral elements stemming from past genomic integration. However, as a synthetic, or engineered, virus could be designed with the intention of causing mass destruction - and not of ensuring proliferation - this evolutionary protection would thus be bypassed, generating a novel and unimaginably deadly challenge to biorisk management.
Public understanding of the concept of biorisk was forever changed by the 2001 ‘Amerithrax’ attacks, wherein two United States senators and several media outlets receiving threatening notes laced with anthrax spores. This act of terror - performed in condemnation of the American declaration of military retaliation against Afghanistan’s Al Qaeda subsequent to 9/11 - resulted in twenty two infections and five deaths, bringing the prospect of readily accessible, figuratively DIY bioweapons to the forefront of the public imagination. With the dawn of an 'Information Age', it had become alarmingly easy to find data which could be utilised to replicate and propagate deadly pathogens—with one investigation performed by The Guardian in 2006 concluding that it would cost around £40 to purchase an element of the smallpox genome. Representatives of VH Bio Ltd, the company responsible for providing the selected sequence, admitted to not safety-checking DNA sequences of less than a hundred letters, meaning that a terrorist (with sufficient funding) could purchase hundreds of small snippets of the DNA sequence of a chosen pathogen and piece these snippets together to form a complete viral genome - completely undetected. This piecemeal approach would require significant expertise and significant financial investment, but is far from impossible to execute. Furthermore, whilst deadly, smallpox and anthrax are biological threats with which the human race has already reckoned— their unmitigated release into public spaces would undoubtedly claim lives, but it's not entirely unrealistic to suggest that any outbreak would likely be relatively short-lived.
An engineered or wholly synthetic pathogen would present an entirely novel risk to global biosecurity due to the intention of its creator to cause as much harm as would be possible. Such a pathogen could be optimised for rapid transmission, or increased lethality - and could be disseminated from various release points simultaneously, limiting the effectiveness of traditional containment measures. Additionally, it could be engineered to target specific populations—whether ethnic or geographic—raising concerns about the applications of bioweapons development for the achievement of eugenics. An engineered pathogen could also be deliberately engineered to evade current vaccine technologies (e.g. via an enhanced mutation rate, or by the inclusion of adaptations which impair immune system recognition), or to develop resistance against the antiviral treatments currently available. Given sufficient knowledge and resources, a bioterrorist could theoretically create a pathogen intended to bypass every known biosecurity measure, maximising the destruction inflicted upon social infrastructure and the number of associated fatalities. It is highly likely that a treatment or vaccine would eventually become available but, depending on the reproduction and mutation rate of the virus at hand, this could potentially take years - far from the hundred-day goal - which might be tangible only in anticipation of a pandemic of natural origin.