News

CPLB hosts a retreat on ethics in the fight against engineered pandemics

In June, the Center for Population-Level Bioethics held its first annual retreat. This year’s session was devoted to the ethics of deferring, detecting, and responding to engineered-virus pandemics. Philosophers, biologists, epidemiologists, doctors, and policy and pandemic response experts gathered in upstate New York to discuss the scientific, philosophical and policy aspects of this emerging challenge.

Biotech tools will increasingly give states, organizations, and individuals the know-how, the machinery, and the materials to unleash highly destructive engineered pandemics, with especially dangerous viruses. The magnitude of potential destruction is very different than those of natural pandemics. And the countermeasures likeliest to succeed may differ from the ones used against routine challenges to public health and against the bulk of natural pandemics. Participants discussed the scientific, ethical and policy questions raised by the distinctive countermeasures that may meet this formidable emerging challenge.

Keynote talks were presented by Kevin Esvelt (MIT), Marc Lipsitch (Harvard), and Carla Saenz (PAHO). The Hastings Center hosted some sessions, and the retreat was funded by Longview Philanthropy.