I'm pleased to share "Use common standards to stop risky research", a letter I co-authored with Wilmot James (Brown University) and Jonathan Ewbank (Director General of EBSA corporate member ERINHA), published in the leading journal Science on 29 October 2026.

It responds to the new US Government Policy for Stopping High-Risk Life Sciences Research. The policy's reach is international, covering US federally funded research wherever it is done and restricting funding where oversight is judged inadequate, yet it never says which standards apply, how compliance is demonstrated, or what competence assessors need. We argue the tools already exist: ISO 35001 for biorisk management, ISO/TS 5441 for competence, and the MIHCLE reporting standard, with journals as the lever for research outside US funding.

The letter builds directly on our PLoS Biology Perspective from earlier this year, "Measures to strengthen international biosafety and biosecurity practices" (Decroly et al.), whose authors from across the world include several fellow EBSA members. That piece argued that research with infectious agents needs strong biorisk management wherever it happens, and that funders and publishers, using a formal reporting standard, are the natural gatekeepers to require it. The Science letter applies that framework to a live policy question.

Both pieces go to the heart of EBSA's purpose: biosafety and biosecurity best practice shared in Europe and beyond. Common standards are how that happens, and EBSA members have been part of the journey from CWA 15793, on which ISO 35001 is based, to the ISO 35001 courses we have run for members. 

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ael6976