Currently, accident reporting is framed as an unpleasant and largely unimportant chore, even though there’s evidence of lab leaks causing massive harm. Encouraging research groups to report their accidents in a fast and thorough way could therefore be very impactful. We could build a reporting system in a variety of ways, this research in itself would be a good thing to fund. A potential system could be to implement insurance policies that require efficient and honest documentation. A different approach could be to fund a safety person in each lab/research group whose responsibility is to ensure the maintenance of the equipment, good risk assessment and reporting accidents.
To some degree these already exists (eg here’s a description of Canada’s system), but I’m certain they could be drastically expanded, standardized, synthesized, and otherwise improved.
Accident reporting in biology research labs
Biorisk and Recovery from Catastrophe
Currently, accident reporting is framed as an unpleasant and largely unimportant chore, even though there’s evidence of lab leaks causing massive harm. Encouraging research groups to report their accidents in a fast and thorough way could therefore be very impactful. We could build a reporting system in a variety of ways, this research in itself would be a good thing to fund. A potential system could be to implement insurance policies that require efficient and honest documentation. A different approach could be to fund a safety person in each lab/research group whose responsibility is to ensure the maintenance of the equipment, good risk assessment and reporting accidents.
To some degree these already exists (eg here’s a description of Canada’s system), but I’m certain they could be drastically expanded, standardized, synthesized, and otherwise improved.