Risk Assessment Framework for Deliberate Environmental Release of Genetically Altered Organisms

这笔赠款的目的是为制定一个评估框架提供支助，以处理与故意释放生物技术产品有关的环境和健康风险。尽管生物技术的销售和发展迅速增长，但目前尚不存在评估故意释放到环境中的转基因生物的风险的公认准则。因此，政府和私人机构都无法充分评估对计划释放的分析是否彻底和称职，因此公众可能无法从现实的角度看待生物技术的风险。拟议的项目要求研究人员评估一些重要的问题，这些问题涉及科学界非常感兴趣的理论和应用问题。例如，公众最关心有机体的哪些特性？需要考虑环境的哪些特征？如何用有意义的术语描述发布的规模和预期风险？对这些问题和相关问题的回答最初将基于对过去转基因生物释放的评估和对监管机构当前风险评估要求的分析；然后，这个初始信息库将被用作制定改进的风险评估框架的基础。

The purpose of this grant is to provide support for the development of an assessment framework addressing environmental and health risks associated with the deliberate release of biotechnology products. Despite rapid growth in biotechnology sales and development, accepted guidelines for evaluating the risks of genetically-altered organisms that are deliberately released into the environment do not exist. As a result, neither government nor private agencies are able to assess adequately whether the analysis of a planned release is thorough and competent, and the public therefore may be unable to place the risks of biotechnology within a realistic perspective. The proposed project requires the researchers to assess a number of important issues that involve both theoretical and applied questions of great interest to the scientific community. For example, what characteristics of the organism are of greatest concern to the public? What features of the environment need to be taken into account? How can the scale and anticipated risks of the release be described in meaningful terms? Answers to these and related questions will be based initially on the assessment of past releases of modified organisms and an analysis of the current risk assessment requirements of regulatory agencies; this initial information base then will be used as the basis for developing an improved risk assessment framework.