ABSTRACT
Biorisk management encompasses both laboratory biosafety and biosecurity. The laboratory biosafety community has relied on predefined biosafety levels* for more than 30 years. Laboratory biosecurity has a much shorter history than biosafety, but it has been predominantly based on prescriptive regulations. In both cases, biosafety and biosecurity practices have generally relied on generic biological agent risk
groups, biosafety levels, or regulations that, de facto, assume that all work with the same agent presents the same degree of risk-regardless of the nature of the work, where it takes place, or by whom. Diagnostic work with avian influenza should take place in essentially the same laboratory in Minneapolis as in Jakarta, and if the laboratories physically look the same, the risk of accidental release will be essentially the same. Of course, anyone with any substantive experience in the biological research and diagnostics field, particularly biosafety experts, will recognize the absurd simplicity of that statement, but for many who want to build a new bioscience facility, the published guidance leads them to believe that achieving the prescribed biosafety level equates to biological safety in that facility.
