The Seven Deadly Sins of Biomedical Research
Concerns about risky research prompted the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to issue a report in 2004 titled “Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism,” listing seven “experiments of concern,” recognized as the “seven deadly sins,” that should not be pursued if they could create pathogens that are not already present in nature.
These experiments include:
Demonstrating how to make a vaccine ineffective
Developing a pathogen’s resistance to antibiotics or antiviral agents
Enhancing a pathogen’s virulence (i.e., lethality) or making a non-lethal microbe lethal
Increasing the transmissibility of a pathogen (e.g., making a non-airborne pathogen airborne)
Altering the host range of a pathogen by increasing the number of species it can infect
Enabling a pathogen to evade diagnostic testing
Enabling a biological agent or toxin to be weaponized
