In September 2012, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Association of American Universities (AAU), Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) convened a meeting of scientists, research administrators, and biosecurity experts to share information about existing programs for review, oversight, and communication of dual use research.
Meeting participants were asked to consider the following questions:
•What dual use oversight strategies have institutions voluntarily implemented?
•What challenges did institutions face when implementing dual use review and oversight programs?
•What aspects of dual use review and oversight worked well?
•What is the current state of regulatory burden on research institutions?
The goals of the meeting were to:
•Share best practices from voluntarily-implemented review and oversight programs;
•Identify and discuss lessons learned about the review, mitigation, and communication of potential using the recent H5N1 papers as a case study; and
•Inform current national-level policy debates on dual use life sciences research.
