Unfortunately, the dream of a BWC verification protocol died a couple decades ago, and there's regrettably little reason to be optimistic that treaty will ever amount to much more than "the norm" (i.e. offensive BW work is beyond the pale). A six volume set could be written on that. At WHO, lab biosafety is allegedly a program but I'd say it's a largely marginalized subject with minimal staff. Standards-oriented work on high containment within WHO immediately runs smack into the problem of differing resources between countries / regions. I wish there were more solutions, but as to "the global community" doing something in the form of the G7 (which is hardly 'the global community'), I wouldn't be optimistic that most developing countries would buy into that because they would immediately, and correctly, perceive it as targeting them (because they would anticipate, again correctly, that the US - and maybe some others - will do whatever they want anyway). To the extent they did buy in, I suspect it'd be largely for the money (and who could blame, say, the director of a Central African BSL-3 in need of maintenance of courting the gringos for a hit of cash while not really necessarily buying their agenda?).
Unfortunately, the dream of a BWC verification protocol died a couple decades ago, and there's regrettably little reason to be optimistic that treaty will ever amount to much more than "the norm" (i.e. offensive BW work is beyond the pale). A six volume set could be written on that. At WHO, lab biosafety is allegedly a program but I'd say it's a largely marginalized subject with minimal staff. Standards-oriented work on high containment within WHO immediately runs smack into the problem of differing resources between countries / regions. I wish there were more solutions, but as to "the global community" doing something in the form of the G7 (which is hardly 'the global community'), I wouldn't be optimistic that most developing countries would buy into that because they would immediately, and correctly, perceive it as targeting them (because they would anticipate, again correctly, that the US - and maybe some others - will do whatever they want anyway). To the extent they did buy in, I suspect it'd be largely for the money (and who could blame, say, the director of a Central African BSL-3 in need of maintenance of courting the gringos for a hit of cash while not really necessarily buying their agenda?).
Superb