Global Catastrophic Biological Risks (GCBRs): A Mini Primer

What are Global Catastrophic Biological Risks (GCBRs)?

Global Catastrophic Biological Risks (GCBRs) are pandemics so severe that they have the potential not only to cause mass suffering and death across the world, but also to permanently damage or even eliminate humanity’s long-term future. The most severe of these scenarios might result in human extinction. Other scenarios might not result in human extinction but could nonetheless limit human civilization’s long-term potential for flourishing as a result of the collapse of functional political and social institutions, economic catastrophe, and the loss of scientific knowledge and capabilities necessary for a successful industrialized society. It remains a subject of active debate and inquiry as to just how severe a pandemic would have to be in order to have such destructive second-order consequences, and potential answers are necessarily speculative given both the dearth of historical data and the difficulty of forecasting the interactions between complex nonlinear systems.

Which kinds of pandemics are potential GCBRs?

Only some pandemics have the potential to be GCBRs. Pandemics of natural origin are unlikely to be GCBRs. The first point of evidence for this is that modern humans have existed for approximately 200,000 years without completely being wiped out. Second, while the worst pandemics of natural origin may have presented near-GCBRs, none in recorded history appear to have threatened complete human extinction or permanent damage to human technological progress. For instance, the 1918 influenza pandemic was a global tragedy, infecting about 1/3 of humanity and killing approximately 3% of the world population, but it did not have discernable permanent effects on humanity’s trajectory. While the 14th century Bubonic Plague (Black Death) killed between 25 and 200 million people (the total is disputed) including up to half of the population of Europe, and indirectly helped cause the end of feudalism in Western Europe by strengthening the bargaining power of serfs, its geographic scope was largely limited to Eurasia and North Africa. Similarly, the Columbian Exchange, which brought a cascade of pandemics to the Americas, may have helped cause an 80-95% population collapse in the Native American population due to their lack of previous exposure and immunity to Eurasian infectious diseases, but this devastation was localized to the Americas. Third, and perhaps most importantly, today we have the scientific capacity to understand novel natural pathogens and develop vaccines and therapeutics for them, making them an even less potent threat than before.

In contrast, anthropogenic (human-created) pandemics are more likely to be GCBRs. These risks stem from increasing human bioengineering capabilities. Not only can scientists now synthesize from scratch the genomes of previous pandemic pathogens such as the 1918 influenza, polio, and horsepox (a relative of smallpox), but scientists also have the capability to perform “gain of function” modifications of those pathogens that enhance their lethality, transmissibility, or both. Moreover, while natural pathogen evolution faces certain constraints such as path dependency and sometimes weak selective pressure, a bioengineer does not necessarily face these same constraints. An anthropogenic pandemic is not a mere hypothetical possibility-indeed, scientists believe that the 1977 H1N1 influenza pandemic was not of natural origin, as it closely resembled an influenza strain from 1950 and disproportionately infected those too young to have immunity from prior infection.

What are the different parts of the challenge?

One can decompose the threat posed by GCBRs into a number of interlocking challenges. First, there is the difficulty of achieving international agreement on and compliance with important biosecurity policies such as the Biological Weapons Convention and the International Health Regulations in an international security environment characterized by mistrust and strategic competition. Second, there is the difficulty of constraining non-state actors, including individual scientists whose activities could cause harm, even if unintentionally. The fact that scientific decision-making is decentralized and just one or a few scientists could take a catastrophic misstep creates a dangerous “unilateralist’s curse”. Third, bioengineering capabilities will continue to advance, and a major challenge will be ensuring “differential technological development” such that knowledge and technologies that strengthen defensive capabilities advance faster than knowledge and technologies that advance offensive capabilities. These are just some of the interlocking challenges that raise the risk of GCBRs.

What different policy priorities does a focus on GCBRs imply?

Placing greater policy focus on GCBRs would imply both growing and changing the composition of humanity’ collective investment portfolio in public health and international security. GBCR mitigation spending is extremely cost-effective, so it may be possible to open up new lines of spending rather than repurposing existing funds. However, reallocating existing spending also offers opportunities. Current public health spending on pandemic prevention and response is largely devoted to preventing and responding to the natural pandemics policymakers are most familiar with, rather than potential future human-caused pandemics. The existing global public health investment portfolio should be at least partially rebalanced towards mitigating GCBRs. More generally, international security spending is largely devoted to mitigating traditional security threats arising from conventional and nuclear weapons, rather than global health security. Some of this spending should also be redirected towards efforts to prevent and mitigate GCBRs. However, it is worth acknowledging that redistributing resources can be as politically difficult as raising new resources, and that a combination of strategies will likely need to be employed to ensure the needed resources for GCBR mitigation are available.