Improving U.S. Biosafety and Biosecurity: Revisiting Recommendations from the Federal Experts Security Advisory Panel and the Fast Track Action Committee on Select Agent Regulations

Abstract

Introduction: In response to a series of biosafety incidents in 2014, the White House directed two high-level expert committees to analyze biosafety and biosecurity in U.S. laboratories and make recommendations for work with select agents and toxins. Overall, they recommended 33 actions to address areas related to national biosafety, including promoting a culture of responsibility, oversight, outreach and education, applied biosafety research, incident reporting, material accountability, inspection processes, regulations and guidelines, and determining the necessary number of high-containment laboratories in the United States.

Methods: The recommendations were collected and grouped into categories previously defined by the Federal Experts Security Advisory Panel and the Fast Track Action Committee. Open-source materials were examined to determine what actions had been taken to address the recommendations. The actions taken were compared against the reasoning provided in the committee reports to determine if the concerns were sufficiently addressed.

Results: In this study, we found that 6 recommendations were not addressed and 11 were insufficiently addressed out of 33 total recommended actions.

Discussion and conclusion: Further work is needed to strengthen biosafety and biosecurity in U.S. laboratories handling regulated pathogens (biological select agents and toxins [BSAT]). These carefully considered recommendations should now be enacted, including determining if there is sufficient high-containment laboratory space for response to a future pandemic, developing a sustained applied biosafety research program to improve our understanding of how high-containment research should be performed, bioethics training to educate the regulated community on the consequences of unsafe practices in BSAT research, and the creation of a no-fault incident reporting system for biological incidents, which may inform and improve biosafety training.

Significance: The work presented in this study is significant because previous incidents that occurred in Federal laboratories highlighted shortcomings in the Federal Select Agent Program and the Select Agent Regulations. Progress was made on implementing recommendations to address the shortcomings, but efforts were lost or forgotten over time. The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a brief window of interest in biosafety and biosecurity, and an opportunity to address these shortcomings to increase readiness for future disease emergencies.

Keywords: biosafety; biosecurity; policy; research governance; select agents.