It's really important for committee members not to be trapped in metaphors, which is why I said what I said about nuclear. Nuclear security—real nuclear bombs, not dirty bombs, which are a little easier—are at one end of the spectrum. You can get nuclear security by controlling highly enriched uranium and plutonium. At the other end of the spectrum is cyber-crime. Some 12-year-old in your basement can do a lot of damage with a virus—it's so disseminated.
Close to cyber-crime, but a little bit closer to nuclear, you have chemical, and just to the left of chemical is about where biological sits. What I was really saying is, don't get trapped into the nuclear metaphor and think that just because you have pathogen security you have biosecurity. It's necessary, but not sufficient.
I thought that was really important for the committee to understand, because then you're not going to go to the nth degree on every last little thing in pathogen security. It won't get you to where you need to be anyway. You need the support of the scientists, because of the “needle in the haystack” problem, and you need to deal with the other issues, such as the life sciences outside of this bill.
So that's the spectrum.
In fact, the first recommendation from our National Academy committee was a broader perspective on the threat spectrum. Scientists who had lived in the United States with the select agent rules—the analog of these rules—for five years said stop being so pathogen-centric; don't only think of pathogens.
You must think of pathogens, but the extreme version of those guys wouldn't have any select agent rules at all. I disagree with that, especially when it comes to level 3 or level 4. But very clearly what they're saying is, don't be pathogen-centric alone; think about these other things. I was exaggerating a little, but not too much, about going from level 0 to level 3.
I wanted to give you that context, so that you're looking at that balance: you realize you're getting some stuff, but you're not solving the problem; hence the parallel process and the need to engage scientists.
Does that help as an elaboration?