Weaponising microbes for peace

Shailly Anand, John E. Hallsworth, James Timmis, Willy Verstraete, Arturo Casadevall, Juan Luis Ramos, Utkarsh Sood, Roshan Kumar, Princy Hira, Charu Dogra Rawat, Abhilash Kumar, Sukanya Lal, Rup Lal, Kenneth Timmis*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

There is much human disadvantage and unmet need in the world, including deficits in basic resources and services considered to be human rights, such as drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, healthy nutrition, access to basic healthcare, and a clean environment. Furthermore, there are substantive asymmetries in the distribution of key resources among peoples. These deficits and asymmetries can lead to local and regional crises among peoples competing for limited resources, which, in turn, can become sources of discontent and conflict. Such conflicts have the potential to escalate into regional wars and even lead to global instability. Ergo: in addition to moral and ethical imperatives to level up, to ensure that all peoples have basic resources and services essential for healthy living and to reduce inequalities, all nations have a self-interest to pursue with determination all available avenues to promote peace through reducing sources of conflicts in the world. Microorganisms and pertinent microbial technologies have unique and exceptional abilities to provide, or contribute to the provision of, basic resources and services that are lacking in many parts of the world, and thereby address key deficits that might constitute sources of conflict. However, the deployment of such technologies to this end is seriously underexploited. Here, we highlight some of the key available and emerging technologies that demand greater consideration and exploitation in endeavours to eliminate unnecessary deprivations, enable healthy lives of all and remove preventable grounds for competition over limited resources that can escalate into conflicts in the world. We exhort central actors: microbiologists, funding agencies and philanthropic organisations, politicians worldwide and international governmental and non-governmental organisations, to engage – in full partnership – with all relevant stakeholders, to ‘weaponise’ microbes and microbial technologies to fight resource deficits and asymmetries, in particular among the most vulnerable populations, and thereby create humanitarian conditions more conducive to harmony and peace.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1091-1111
Number of pages21
JournalMicrobial Biotechnology
Volume16
Issue number6
Early online date7 Mar 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
JEH thanks Flavia Pinzari, Natural History Museum, U. K., for useful discussions. RL thanks the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), New Delhi, for support under the INSA Senior Scientist Programme. We thank Franziska Jebok for contributing the Mind Map of the Graphical Abstract.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. Microbial Biotechnology published by Applied Microbiology International and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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