Complete a biosecurity education survey and enter to win an iPod nano!!!

The Federation of American Scientists Biosecurity Project has prepared a brief online survey to collect feedback on our “Case Studies in Dual-use Biological Research.” To thank participants for completing the survey, we will enter them into a drawing for an 8GB iPod nano. Click here to go to the case studies or here to go directly to the survey. The survey is open now through May 31, 2007.

If you have any colleagues, students or friends involved in biological research or biosecurity, please let them know about the Case Studies and the survey. Thank you for your feedback!

The first four case studies include an introduction to biosecurity, the poliovirus synthesis experiments conducted in Eckard Wimmer’s laboratory at the State University of New York at Stony Brook; the porous particle development work of David Edwards at Harvard University; and the mousepox experiments conducted by two Australian researchers, Ron Jackson and Ian Ramshaw.

We include in-depth interviews with the researchers to document their personal experiences and present the details of their experiments, the implications for biosecurity, and the aftermath of publication. We also include commentary and analysis, accounts of the public reaction, and a discussion of scientist’s roles and responsibilities. The ultimate purpose of the case studies is to vividly illustrate the challenge and ethical complexities of conducting biology research in “an era of bioterrorism,” and to illustrate how government, the public, the scientific community, and law enforcement have interacted in the past and need to cooperate in the future.