EA - An overview of standards in biosafety and biorisk by rosehadshar

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: An overview of standards in biosafety and biorisk, published by rosehadshar on July 26, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Linkpost forThis report represents ~40 hours of work by Rose Hadshar in summer 2023 for Arb Research, in turn for Holden Karnofsky in response to this call for proposals on standards.It's based on a mixture of background reading, research into individual standards, and interviews with experts. Note that I didn't ask for permission to cite the expert interviews publicly, so I've anonymised them.I suggest reading the scope and summary and skimming the overview, then only looking at sections which seem particularly relevant to you.ScopeThis report covers:Both biosecurity and biosafety:Biosecurity: "the protection, control and accountability for valuable biological materials (including information) in laboratories in order to prevent their unauthorized access, loss, theft, misuse, diversion or intentional release."Biosafety: "the containment principles, technologies and practices that are implemented to prevent unintentional exposure to pathogens and toxins or their accidental release"Biosecurity and biosafety standards internationally, but with much more emphasis on the USRegulations and guidance as well as standards proper. I am using these terms as follows:Regulations: rules on how to comply with a particular law or laws. Legally bindingGuidance: rules on how to comply with particular regulations. Not legally binding, but risky to ignoreStandards: rules which do not relate to compliance with a particular law or laws. Not legally binding.Note that I also sometimes use 'standards' as an umbrella term for regulations, guidance and standards.Summary of most interesting findingsFor each point:I've included my confidence in the claim (operationalised as the probability that I would still believe the claim after 40 hours' more work).I link to a subsection with more details (though in some cases I don't have much more to say).The origins of bio standards(80%) There were many different motivations behind bio standards (e.g. plant health, animal health, worker protection, bioterrorism, fair sharing of genetic resources.)(70%) Standards were significantly reactive to rather than proactive about incidents (e.g. lab accidents, terrorist attacks, and epidemics), though:There are exceptions (e.g. the NIH guidelines on recombinant DNA)Guidance is often more proactive than standards (e.g. gene drives)(80%) International standards weren't always later or less influential than national ones(70%) Voluntary standards seem to have prevented regulation in at least one case (e.g. the NIH guidelines)(65%) In the US, it may be more likely that mandatory standards are passed on matters of national security (e.g. FSAP)Compliance(60%) Voluntary compliance may sometimes be higher than mandated compliance (e.g. NIH guidelines)(70%) Motives for voluntarily following standards include responsibility, market access, and the spread of norms via international training(80%) Voluntary standards may be easier to internationalise than regulation(90%) Deliberate efforts were made to increase compliance internationally (e.g. via funding biosafety associations, offering training and other assistance)Problems with these standards(90%) Bio standards are often list-based. This means that they are not comprehensive, do not reflect new threats, prevent innovation in risk management, and fail to recognise the importance of context for riskThere's been a partial move away from prescriptive, list-based standards towards holistic, risk-based standards (e.g. ISO 35001)(85%) Bio standards tend to lack reporting standards, so it's very hard to tell how effective they are(60%) Standards may have impeded safety work in some areas (e.g. select agent designation as a...