Biotechnology and chemical weapons control
M. Wheelis
Section of Microbiology, University of California,
1 Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA
Abstract:
Biotechnology is revolutionizing the way new drugs are discovered, from
a substantially empirical art to a rational, predictive process in which
targets of drugs are selected on the basis of known physiology, then
ligands that can bind to these targets are designed. The same process
could be used to identify promising new chemical weapons (CW) agents,
which would be synthesized from unscheduled precursors. Biotechnology
thus has the potential of fueling CW proliferation. It can also aid
the development of novel nonlethal chemical agents, the development
of which could have a number of negative consequences for CW control.
*Lecture presented at the IUPAC Workshop, Impact of
Scientific Developments on the Chemical Weapons Convention, Bergen,
Norway, 30 June-3 July 2002. Other presentations are published in this
issue, pp. 2229-2322.
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