Background
With the Cold War’s end and amid rising concerns about asymmetric warfare and fanatical terrorism, policy attention during the 1990s increasingly focused on the dangers associated with malevolent infliction of disease (bioviolence). At the same time, the biotech revolution, including the decoding of the human genome, opened potential pathways to create horrifying bioweapons and made available to broad communities the technology for inflicting catastrophe. In sharp contrast to these growing security dangers, the international community has been and continues to be wholly disorganized to take up appropriate policy responses.
Professor Barry Kellman first became involved with these matters by publishing articles then serving as Legal Advisor to the National Commission on Terrorism (1999-2001). In the wake of the 9/11 and subsequent Amerithrax attacks, Prof. Kellman held the first workshop to focus on the role of international law enforcement in combating biothreats. One outcome of that workshop was creation of the Interpol Program on Prevention of Biological Terrorism, the only global initiative to focus on these dangers. Through the following years, Professor Kellman has organized 17 major international workshops, participated in over a dozen Interpol conferences and training sessions, has given over 200 briefings to officials of over 50 governments and intergovernmental organizations, and has spoken at many conferences worldwide.
Out of this experience came the realization that a huge mission space remains unfilled. Thus, in 2008, Prof. Kellman and other prominent thought leaders in this issue domain identified the need to establish an Institute to optimally fill this mission space. The International Security & Biopolicy Institute (ISBI) was officially formed in early 2009 as a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization, incorporated in Washington, D.C. ISBI is the only institute dedicated to addressing the challenges and opportunities of emerging bioscience from a global perspective.