Bioscience is not just an activity or set of knowledge. It is a uniquely accelerating phenomenon that evokes inquiries about humanity's most existential search – what is the architecture of life? Our era is witnessing an unprecedented revolution in human comprehension of the physics of life. Yesterday's flights of imagination are today's reality. Only the best scientific minds can predict where the rush of scientific advance will take us tomorrow, and even they can only guess at what might be conventional wisdom in a few brief decades.

This bioscience revolution offers enormously beneficial prospects for curing disease that necessarily expose how pathogens exploit human vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, these scientific advances could supply knowledge for the commission of heinous violence. Thus, at the core of research to protect against bioviolence is a paradox: To learn how to defeat disease is to learn how it works. As the 21st Century opens, bioscience's precious potential is intertwined with cascades of new threats. Techniques that generate life-saving progress are the same techniques that could generate catastrophic bioviolence.