Oversight of Dual-Use Research: What Role for Ethics Committees?

摘要: The World Health Organization (WHO) Global Guidance Framework for the Responsible Use of the Life Sciences addresses the governance of biorisks, including dual-use research, for countries. It emphasizes engaging multisectoral stakeholders such as governments, scientific bodies, health and research institutes, standard-setting organizations, funding bodies, and others. Ethics constitutes a key component of the framework. Given the high social impact of such research and the importance of trust, risk, and benefit, national ethics committees could make a valuable contribution by providing ethical guidance in the decisionmaking process. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of national ethics committees in the context of governance and oversight of dual-use research at the national level. We conducted a landscape analysis of the activities of ethics committees in dual-use research oversight. We …