Of particular interest to the workshop, the surveys also examined biology course references to the term dual use. In Europe, approximately 20 percent of the courses surveyed did include such a reference, an additional 23 percent did not, and the results for the rest of the sample were unclear on the basis of the materials available. The authors further reported that attitudes varied among interviewed individuals with regard to the utility of teaching students about potential dual use issues in the life sciences. In Japan, on the other hand, the researchers report that bioethics content discussing the use and potential misuse of science was relatively common (94 cases), even if it was not explicitly framed in terms of “dual use.”

Indeed, a significant proportion of the individuals who responded to the researchers’ requests for further information were unfamiliar with “dual use” as applied to the life sciences (17 of 24 respondents). In the United Kingdom, 8 degree courses offered material on dual use issues out of 57. Secondary school A-level biology course specifications like- wise did not include specific references to biological weapons or to “dual use,” although discussions of ethical, social, and environmental issues in biology were broadly encouraged. A similar survey was conducted in Israel, in a partnership between the Bradford Disarmament Research Centre and the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS).

The authors sampled the content of 35 biosafety and bioethics courses from six research universities in the country and reported that “there was no specific module on biosecurity found in this investigation, while 4 biosafety modules and 28 bioethics modules were discovered” (Friedman 2009). The authors note, however, that Israel presents an example of a country with significant current opportunities for increasing education on biosecurity topics, including dual use issues. In 2008, the Steering Committee on Issues in Biotechnological Research in the Age of Terrorism, a joint project of the INSS and the Israel Academy of Science and Humanities, released its report Biotechnological Research in an Age of Terrorism (Israel Academy 2008). A number of the report’s recommendations were subsequently enacted into law.

The Council for Biological Disease Agent Research was established under the Regulation of Research into Biological Disease Agents Act, providing a top-down framework with the ability to support the implementation of biosecurity education. In addition to the surveys cited above, a number of other surveys were being developed and implemented by the Bradford-Landau collaboration. Surveys for Ukraine, Morocco, Pakistan, and the Asia-Pacific were among the examples cited during the workshop or reported later (Minehata). In addition to their role in providing information, the surveys were seen as part of a broader strategy to identify potential collaborators and raise awareness at the national and international level about the current state of education about dual use issues. Learning things is not limited to the scentific area. Instead it also has relations with some other things like speaking a language or using software, including Rosetta Stone Japanese and Rosetta Stone Korean. If you have a creative mind, you will make all your own differences in the end!