Governance and Biosecurity: Strengthening Security and Oversight of the Nation's Biological Agent Laboratories
Document Type: Article
This article was adapted from Congressional Testimony delivered by Michael Greenberger on September 22, 2009 before the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security. See: http://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cong_test/34/
Abstract
A serious policy conundrum currently confronts the scientific and regulatory communities in the United States. In the country’s high-containment biological agent research laboratories, we seek to encourage the use of our best scientific resources to develop countermeasures to the weaponization of highly dangerous biopathogens while not endangering those researchers or the public at large during experimentation that necessarily requires the use of the very biopathogens we seek to defeat.
It is the thesis of this article that the United States can improve security measures at those laboratories that handle the most dangerous pathogens, so countermeasures to potential bioterror attacks may be developed without having that research in and of itself pose a threat to national security. This article makes recommendations in aid of such a policy.
Keywords:
Anthrax, biopathogens, bioterrorism, securityDiscipline(s)
Health Law
Recommended Citation
12 DePaul Journal of Health Care Law (2009).
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