Biosafety at the French Academy of Sciences

As part of its mission to advise public authorities, the Académie des sciences only formalised its involvement in defense issues in 1992, with the creation of a Science, Technology and Strategy Committee linked to the Ministry of Defense. This committee is concerned with all aspects of defense. The issue of biological threats and the relationship between biology and defense are therefore addressed in a general context.After this committee was dissolved in 1997, in 2004 the Academy created a committee independent of the ministry, the Science and Security Committee, a term that includes the issue of biological security in its broadest sense, including defense. In practice, this committee gradually focused its work on biology, publishing a seminal work on Biological threats in 2008, one of the main recommendations of which was the creation of a scientific committee to monitor biosecurity.Afterwards, the Academy worked for several years on this initiative, which was formalised by the decree of 31 August 2015 establishing the Conseil national consultatif pour la biosécurité (CNCB). Reporting to the Prime Minister, the CNCB is a joint body whose scientific members are proposed by the Academy. Meanwhile, in 2014, the Academy's Science and Safety Committee became the Science and Biosafety Committee. It has since been working closely with the CNCB in a world where accelerating scientific progress is facilitating access to potentially dual-use technologies and sophisticated forms of terrorism.