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I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture of the Bhagavad Gita.

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Additional. It's trying to persuade the prince that.

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He should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi armed form and says, Now I am the commander, the destroyer of worlds.

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I suppose we all thought that one way or another. That was a quote from the atomic physicist Robert Oppenheimer.

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Nicknamed Father of the Atomic Bomb, for the role he played in helping the United States develop the first atomic bomb.

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The clip reveals something of Oppenheimer's well-known moral struggle to come to terms with the consequences of his research.

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It's an interesting contrast to another of his famous quotes. There must be no barriers for freedom of inquiry.

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The scientist is free and must be free to ask any questions.

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This encapsulates a problem that's come to be known as the dual use dilemma.

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Quite often, the same research that can be used to do good can also be used for much more malevolent purposes.

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Whereas in the 20th century, atomic physics was at the heart of this dilemma.

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Today, much of the debate is over developments in biological sciences.

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My name is Chan Dima and I'm from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology.

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In this podcast, we'll be talking to scientists and scientific publishers who both have a role to play in tackling this.

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Leland talked to Phil Willis, empty chair of the Science and Technology Committee in the House of Commons,

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to hear his views on where politicians fit into all of this and to help me with this is Tom Douglas,

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who is a Ph.D. student in bioethics at Oxford University.

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Okay. Well, Tom,

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can you start by giving me some examples from history of why this dual use dilemma has cropped up with a classic example from history comes from,

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as you mentioned, 20th century nuclear physics. So a good example would be the Manhattan Project,

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where the US government wanted to develop nuclear fission technology for both energy generation purposes and for weapons development.

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And scientists that were involved in this project were quite aware that it had potentially devastating applications as well, as well as good ones.

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Why is this issue of dual use of particular interest now?

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I think one reason why it's come to our attention recently is because of some developments,

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mostly in the life sciences areas where it's been particularly obvious that there are potential applications of this research to develop,

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for example, biological weapons. This coincided with the September 11 attacks in the US,

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which obviously raised awareness of the threat from terrorism and also with the anthrax letters attacks in the US.

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As part of my research, I spoke to a number of scientific journal editors because there have been some suggestions that the Journal edited

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is may be in a position to to perhaps screen the papers they receive based on possible concerns about misuse.

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And some of us have suggested that journal editors should censor their journals in some way to ensure that they're

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not publishing what could be interpreted as effectively instructions on how to build a biological weapon.

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For example, one of the scientific journal editors that I spoke to was Professor Charles Payne from the University of Birmingham,

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who's a professor of microbiology and also the editor of the Journal of Medical Microbiology.

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A good example of that is the smallpox virus, which is fully understood, and we know all about its DNA sequence.

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We know that it's a serious pathogen, but it's it's no longer available, if you like, on the open market.

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So that could be recreated using DNA synthesis.

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However, that's that's the theoretical answer in practice.

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You also have to package that DNA to make a viable pathogen that will actually be infectious.

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And and with that and other technical problems, this is not nearly as easy a task as it as it might seem.

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So I don't think we're yet really close to even to doing that on a kind of bioterrorism scale.

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It would still be a massive and difficult task.

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The other angle on this is that one could, in theory, create a new pathogen, a kind of designer pathogen,

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and put together a bunch of genes, which, in theory, from what we know already, would create a very serious novel pathogenic organism.

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But again, I think we we really lack the understanding of how nature has done that job.

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My feeling is we're a very long way, really, from being able to design from scratch the ideal pathogen and created in the laboratory.

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Michael Calculate is an ethicist based in Canberra at the Australian National University.

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He's really the first philosopher or ethicist to start looking at the tool used to limit.

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MATTHEWS Now, it's clear that recent development and genetic make possible development of biological weapons, partly illustrated by CIA, quote,

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saying that advances in biotechnology,

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like genetic engineering now make it possible to create new diseases worse than any diseases previously known to humankind.

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So that's one example. DNA Synthesis. Did you explore any other areas of science which raise similar issues over the potential for harm?

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So one other area that's increasingly being discussed is neuroscience, which is currently a very hot scientific field.

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It's advancing rapidly, and some of the technologies that neuroscientists are developing or attempting to develop, it could be used in unethical ways.

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So one example would be a new imaging technology.

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It seems possible that in the future this technology could be developed to the point that people interpreting

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these brain scans can draw inferences about what the subjects were thinking or feeling at the time,

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and their concerns that this could be used in ways that invade people's privacy.

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So do you think scientists think enough about these issues?

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I think scientists have been very good at starting to think about a lot of ethical issues that have been raised by their work in recent years.

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This is particularly true in the life sciences, where there's been a kind of bioethics movement.

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People working in stem cell research, for example, have started to think quite a lot about the issues.

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But one issue that hasn't been thought about very much by either scientists or bioethicists is the issue of how scientific knowledge is used.

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The questions have been more been asked about whether scientific knowledge is produced in ethical ways,

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but not about whether it's actually ethical to produce certain kinds of knowledge that could be misused.

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So Tom certainly thinks that scientists themselves have some responsibility for thinking about the consequences of their research.

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That can this always be predicted? Should scientific research be policed?

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And if so, who should do it?

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And at what stage, before any resulting technologies are available on the market, before the research is published, or before it's even undertaken?

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Here's what Michael Salkeld thinks. Well, everyone's responsible, including ordinary voters.

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Those more directly involved scientists should be taking more use, dangers and consideration when they're deciding what research to do,

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when they're deciding whether or not to disseminate potentially dangerous research findings.

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There's a role for research institutions. They should be providing more in the way of ethics, education to scientists.

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And they need to be implementing more in the way of oversight mechanisms, i.e., you know,

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looking at what research is taking place and looking at the dual use dangers associated with that research.

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There's a role for journals to be screening submitted articles for tool use.

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So Salga thinks that there are cases where it would be justifiable to censor research.

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Although he accepts it would be difficult. And there are many other possible approaches like regulating trade, for example.

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But Charles Penn is sceptical about whether censorship would do any good.

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Well, I think at the moment it's very difficult to envisage practical interventions that would fulfil the need to

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be cautious about the possibilities while at the same time not inhibiting legitimate biomedical research.

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I can't really see ways at the moment that we could sensibly restrict access to the available technologies

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without really tying the hands of people who are following legitimate lines of medical research.

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And would you think that scientific articles or parts of them should ever be held back from publication because of concerns about misuse?

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I think one can imagine rare examples where that might be advisable.

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For example, in determining complete genome sequences of some of the more severe or serious pathogens.

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There have been questions asked by scientists, in fact, as to whether it was responsible to to publish these.

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An example of that would be the plague organism, for example,

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where the complete genome sequence was determined just within the last five or six years.

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And scientists involved in that have have told me that, you know, they did wonder.

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They gave it some consideration.

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I think one of the problems, though, is that the publication is actually the final stage in quite a long process of of scientific activity.

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Science, as we know it in the biomedical community is a communal activity.

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It's a community activity. We are all interdependent.

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There's an awful lot known in the community about what we're each doing.

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We talk about it with collaborators and colleagues long before it's published.

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So putting a restriction at the level of publication in many ways, the what you might say is the genie is already out of the bottle.

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So what role did policy makers play in all of this?

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Phil Willis, the chairman of the Innovation University Science and Skill Select Committee and soon to be the science and technology side,

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Phil Willis MP thinks they have the hardest job at all.

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I went to talk to him in his Westminster office.

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What role do you think policymakers have, if any, in ensuring that science is not used for unethical purposes?

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I think for scientists it's relatively easy because they simply follow the scientific research,

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and the whole ethics of being a scientist is, in fact, to try to draw your science to its logical end point.

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I think for ethicists, the issue is easy because, again, the subject might be complex.

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Their role is to weigh up the ethics for and against elements of science.

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For policymakers, it's dreadfully difficult.

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And we saw that, of course, in the United States with George Bush and the stem cell agenda,

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and we're seeing it in the UK, but particularly in Europe, over the GM agenda.

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So my my simple view is that policymakers have a duty to the public to actually ensure that there is a body of research which has been

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properly peer tested and which can be put openly and without comment before the public as the basis for forming policy judgements.

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And where that doesn't happen. You will get that policy and I think a distortion of science.

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So you're saying really that you don't think policy makers have any role where the research is actually done and the results disseminated?

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U.S. policymakers have have a role to play further down the line.

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I think increasingly down the line, I think they have a role to play.

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But when we're talking about pure science, I think the least that scientists are affected by policy, the better.

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I think the boundaries are best set by committees outside the House rather than by politicians.

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One of the issues that there's a lot of debate around at the moment is the idea of DNA synthesis and

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the possibility that terrorists might eventually be able to recreate pathogens in the laboratory.

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So that's an issue. But there's a lot of debate about whether we should restrict either what research is done or restrict what's published.

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Do you think that perhaps in instances like that, there's ever a case for scientific censorship?

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I don't. I think that once you actually censor science, you're going down a very slippery slope in an opposite direction.

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And the fact that we saw pre a 2008 in the United States deliberate attempts by the Bush administration to censor science and individual scientists

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and indeed to remove grants from them if they were overstepping the mark is something that I think we should deliberately avoid in this country.

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If you go back to the whole issue of of DNA streams and the way in which you can actually build out, for instance, dangerous pathogens.

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Most of that science is already out there. It's already available, you know, on the Internet, the idea that you can put a lid on it and say,

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oh, well, we'll all obey the rules by now is just absolute madness.

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Obama recently said that he wanted America to be the first in as many areas of

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science as possible and where they weren't first to be the country of choice.

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And that must be UK's position, you know as well.

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And once you start saying we are going to restrict certain elements of science for political reasons,

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then I genuinely think you will undermine science itself.

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Because if you start with a belief that science is inherently evil and cannot be controlled,

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well, you really go back to, you know, the horror movies rather than a sensible debate.

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I think that what I've learned from this podcast is that there is no simple solution to tackling the dual use nature of scientific research.

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We're all responsible in our own way for understanding the potential consequences of

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scientific research and taking appropriate action depending on what our role is in society.

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Although most of the people we've talked to have different opinions on what we should be doing about the dual use dilemma.

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They do all agree that there is a real risk that if we try and hold back scientific research, we could lose out on all the benefits that it can bring.

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And Ireland with an interesting quote from the French physicist and psychologist Gustav Labonte.

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Science has promised us truth. It has never promised us either peace or happiness.