Global Catastrophic Biological Risks (GCBRs) are biological risks of unprecedented scale that have the potential to cause such significant damage to human civilization that they undermine its long-term potential.
History
Pandemics are outbreaks of infectious disease that have spread around the world. There have been countless examples throughout history, including the Black Death which killed over a third of the combined population of Europe and the Middle East in the 1300s, and smallpox, which killed up to 300M in the 20th century alone before being eradicated. Historical pandemics have mostly emerged from “nature” via zoonoses, i.e. when an infectious pathogen jumps from an animal (wild or farmed) to humans. However, in addition to pandemic risks from zoonotic events, new research practices and advances in biotechnologies pose new risks to humanity.
New sources of risk
Accidents occurring during “gain-of-function research” in biosafety labs pose a new threat to society, via artificially enhanced pathogens leaking from the laboratory’s containment and spreading via community transmission. These pathogens could have increased transmissibility or virulence, or a longer incubation period, relative to their “natural” counterparts, which would render the resulting pandemic significantly more devastating. This research is also becoming easier, via developments in synthetic biology such as DNA synthesis and CRISPR.
Some biosafety measures are in place in biology labs around the world that effectively mitigate (although do not eradicate entirely) the risks of lab leaks. However, there are also risks from deliberate development and deployment of biological weapons, which have some historical precedent. During the 20th century, the Soviet Biological Weapons Programme employed tens of thousands of people and worked to weaponize and stockpile a diverse range of dangerous pathogens, and Imperial Japan’s Unit 731 also developed sophisticated biological warfare capabilities. Partially as a result of the establishment of the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972, there are no known biological weapons programmes in operation today, though there may be some covert operations, and the barriers to developing new covert biological warfare capabilities are not insurmountable for sophisticated nation state actors. Advances in biotechnology also increase the risk from less sophisticated bio-terrorist groups developing the capabilities to create highly virulent and transmissible pathogens.
Our focus
In a worst-case scenario, these pathogens could cause billions of fatalities. The Cambridge Existential Risks Initiative seeks to support talented students into careers that mitigate these risks, especially arising from pandemics that could permanently curtail humanity’s future potential, for example via an extinction-level event, or a pandemic that destroys civilization or puts civilization on a path towards ruin. However, research aiming to mitigate these risks can also be dangerous, see for example dual-use research, or by generating or propagating information hazards. Therefore, projects that fellows pursue will be carefully developed and managed with CERI's biosecurity team, alongside a network of biosecurity experts.
Further resources
