Education: a national action plan
{"Image DocumentName": "Education: a national action plan", "Image ImageDescription": "Structural. Individual. Autonomous. Legal. 1. Developing an educational resource for codes of conduct; 2. Developing capacity building programmes. 3. Changing evaluation criteria of funding bodies or review criteria of scientific journals. 4. Changing evaluation criteria on higher education institutions. 5. Establishing a national advisory board. 6. Legislating a biosecurity act Notes: 1. Malcolm Dando argues that placing open-source teaching material online, via the internet, could assist in the assimilation of biosecurity education into existing curricula, ease constraints on time spent planning and preparing materials, overcome financial constraints on the development of biosecurity programmes, and provide the expertise required for the efficient and effective integration of such material. 2. As the surveys (conducted by Dando and Rappert, see Dando 2008) suggested that scientific communities, including university lecturers, are not familiar with the biosecurity topic, the next stage in promoting biosecurity teaching would be to build the capacity of relevant professionals through the implementation of train-the trainer programmes in different institutions. 3. Other autonomous approaches are to make ethical awareness for dual-use issues an evaluation criterion for grant applications by funding bodies or review processes for scientific journals. For example, in the UK, the Biotechnology and Biological Research Council (BBSRC), the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Wellcome Trust now require consideration of and awareness among scientists about dual-use risks in scientific research as a criterion for the assessment of grant applications (Wellcome Trust 2005). 4. Another intervention to promote dual-use bioethics education can be set out by making ethical awareness on dual-use issues an evaluation/ranking criterion for higher education bodies, such as universities. There are examples of the establishment of an independent national advisory board for biosecurity. The actual experiences of this approach included the following stages: setting up a national committee to hold interdisciplinary discussions on the definition of risks, biosecurity measures and strategic recommendations for policy development in biosecurity, and. the establishment of an individual national board on biosecurity which provides guidelines for the oversight of scientific research, laboratory management measures, and awareness raising of scientists. 6. A useful policy process that could enhance national implement of international agreements is to instigate appropriate national legislation. In this specific case (Azerbaijan), this could consist of the legislation of a biosecurity act or the amendment of existing laws and regulations. Ref: Dando, M. R. (2008) Developing Educational Modules for Life Scientists Accelerating the Process though an Open Source Initiative, presented to the IWG\u2013LNCV Biological workshop and round table on fostering the biosecurity norm: An educational module for life sciences students, 27 October at the Municipality of Como, Italy. Minehata, M. (2010) Incorporating Dual-Use in the Ethics Education of Life Scientists: Challenges and Lessons Learned, presented at the Third International Global Ethics Association Conference, University of the West of England, Bristol, 30 June - 2 July, Wllcome Trust. (2005) A joint Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Medical Research Council (MRC) and Wellcome Trust Policy Statement, Available from:", "Image XResolution": "37", "Image YResolution": "37", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Centimeter", "Image Software": "SlidePlayer", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered"}