Excerpt

The purpose of this guidance is to inform Member States about the risks posed by accidents or the potential deliberate misuse of life sciences research and to propose measures to minimize these risks within the context of promoting and harnessing the power of the life sciences to improve health for all people. Although the issues addressed in this document can potentially interest a quite large audience, the proposed measures and the self-assessment questionnaire are of a public health nature. Health researchers, laboratory managers and research institutions are therefore the primary audience of this guidance.

Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Acronyms
• Definitions
• Executive summary
• 1. Introduction
  • 1.1 Context, purpose, audience and scope of the guidance
  • 1.2 Methodology
  • 1.3 Structure of the guidance
• 2. Review of experiments and policy options
  • 2.1 Examples of experiments of concern
  • 2.2 Review of policy options
  • 2.3 Remarks
• 3. The biorisk management framework for responsible life sciences research
  • 3.1 Pillar 1: Research excellence
  • 3.2 Pillar 2: Ethics
  • 3.3 Pillar 3: Biosafety and laboratory biosecurity
• 4. The way forward: the self-assessment questionnaire
  • 4.1 Using the self-assessment tool
  • 4.2 Interpreting the results of the self-assessment tool
  • 4.3 The self-assessment questionnaire
• References
• Annexes
  • Annex 1 Contributors
  • Annex 2 Declaration of interests
  • Annex 3 Guidelines review group workshop on responsible life sciences research, WHO, Geneva, 22–24 June 2009
  • Annex 4 The NSABB’s proposed framework for the oversight of dual-use research
  • Annex 5 A decision-making tool from the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Australia
  • Annex 6 A model from the Center for International and Security Studies
  • Annex 7 Implementation of oversight mechanisms
  • Annex 8 Codes of conduct
  • Annex 9 WHO strategy on research for health

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